
SAMUEL'A’DERIEUX 










FRANK 

OP FREEDOM HILL 


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Old Frank and Tommy 


FRANK 

OF FREEDOM HILL 


BY 

SAMUEL A. DERIEUX 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE 
IN COLOUR 


GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1922 


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COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, BY THE CROWELL COMPANY 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

First Edition 


MAV to 1922 

©CI.A674330 



<r^ 



TO 


DR. BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS 

WHO BELIEVED I COULD WRITE 










CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Destiny of Dan VI 1 

II. Paradise Regained 28 

III. The Bolter . . 51 

IV. Old Frank Sees It Through .... 74 

V. An Act of God 100 

VI. Comet 122 

VII. The Crisis in 25 . 147 

VIII. The Trial in Tom Belcher’s Store . . 167 

IX. The Pursuit 194 

X. The Little Boy in the Blackberry Patch 219 

XI. Blood Money 245 

XII. The Call of Home 266 



- — d - - - - 



FRANK 

OF FREEDOM HILL 



FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


i 

THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

T HE baggageman slid open the side door of the 
car. With a rattle of his chain Dan sprang 
to his feet. A big red Irish setter was Dan, 
of his breed sixth, and most superb, his colour wavy- 
bronze, his head erect and noble, his eyes eloquent 
with that upward-looking appeal of hunting dog to 
hunting man. 

Cold, pine-laden air deluged the heated car and 
chilled his quivering nose and swelled his heaving 
chest. Beyond the baggageman he saw through 
the open door, as on a moving-picture screen, sunlit 
fields and sunlit woods whirling past. He began to 
bark at them eagerly, his eyes hungry, his tail beating 
against the taut chain an excited tattoo. The bag- 
gageman turned with a grin. 

“Birds?” he said. 

At the word the dog reared straight up like a 
maddened horse. Full-throated angry barks, inter- 
spersed with sharp, querulous yaps, filled his roaring, 

l 


2 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


swaying prison. How long since he had got so much 
as a whiff of untainted air, or a glimpse of wild fields 
and woods! Out there oceans of such air filled all 
the space between the gliding earth and the sky. 
Out there miles on miles of freedom were rushing 
forever out of his life. He began to rage, to froth at 
the mouth. The baggageman closed the door. 

“Hard, old scout !” The baggageman shook his 
head. 

Resignedly the dog sank on his belly, his long 
body throbbing, his nose between his paws. A deep 
sigh puffed a little cloud of dust from the slatted 
floor. 

Three years before he had opened his amazed 
puppy eyes on this man (and woman) ruled planet. 
An agreeable place of abode he had found it as long 
as he was owned by a man. The Jersey kennels of 
George Devant had bred him; Devant had himself 
overlooked his first season’s training, had hunted 
him a few times. At Devant’s untimely death, Mrs. 
Devant had sold the place, the kennels, the mounts. 
But when, followed by a group of purchasing sports- 
men, the widow came to the kennel where he waited 
at the end of his chain, she had clasped her hands 
together and cried out : 

“I won’t sell this one!” 

Lancaster, bachelor friend of the late Devant, 
spoke up: 

“Why, I had my eyes on him.” 


TEE DESTINY OF DAN VI 


3 


“You won’t get him,” she laughed. “He’ll live 
with me — won’t you, beauty?” 

“He’s not a lap dog,” Lancaster had reminded her. 

“Don’t you suppose I understand him?” she 
demanded. 

Understand him? What did the woman know of 
a bird dog’s soul? The most intolerable of burdens 
is kindness where no understanding is. To Mrs. 
Devant it never occurred, even remotely, that 
her Riverside Drive apartment was a prison. She 
never dreamed why it was that on their afternoon 
walks the dog, straining at his leash, kept his hungry 
eyes fastened always on the cliffs across the Hudson. 
When they returned, as she pulled off her wraps, she 
would look down at him. 

“I know,” she would say; “you are trying to tell 
me you love me ! ” 

Courteously he would wag his tail. Futilely, out 
of upraised, gently brave eyes he would plead for 
freedom — from a woman who did not know, and 
could not understand. 

Then Lancaster, a frequent caller at the apartment 
of Mrs. Devant, had borrowed him. That morning 
Lancaster himself had put him aboard this train. 
“The trip,” Lancaster had said, “will be easier if 
we don’t crate him.” All day he had known he was 
being hurled away. Was another grimy wilderness 
of brick his destination? Had the baggageman 
closed the door forever on all he loved in the world? 


4 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


The train slowed up, stopped. The baggageman 
opened the door and dropped to the ground. They 
were in the country and the sun had set. Through 
the door the dog looked across a dusky field to a 
black horizon of forest. Above this forest flamed a 
scarlet glow. Something far in its depths called him, 
and he plunged against the chain. 

He was jerked back, choking, the glow out yonder 
reflected in his desperate eyes. He backed against 
the wall, took a running start, and plunged again. 
The breaking of his collar hurled him against a 
trunk on the other side of the car, dazed and con- 
fused. 

A sharp approaching whistle, an ever-loudening 
roar in that brooding silence out there aroused him 
to a sense of his surroundings. A telegraph pole that 
had stood black athwart the glow began to move 
backward. The silhouette of the baggageman rose 
in the doorway. The dog gathered himself together 
and leaped. He landed on shining rails, in front of a 
blinding headlight; the pilot just missed him as he 
sprang out of the way. A northbound passenger 
train roared past. From the other train two sharp 
whistles, the screeching of brakes, and a shout. For 
a moment he stood on the slight embankment, his 
ears thrown defiantly back. Then he turned, and 
with great lung-filling leaps bounded toward the 
glow in the west. 

It was dark in the woods when he stopped and 


TEE DESTINY OF DAN VI 5 

lapped loud and long of icy running water. An 
alarmed owl went flopping heavily away under the 
low-growing branches. Underneath this embodied 
spirit of night galloped the dog, filling the woods 
with barks, leaping high into the air, his teeth snap- 
ping and clicking like castanets. In the edge of a 
straw field looked down upon by stars he rushed a 
covey on the roost. One struck against a tree and 
came chirping down. Dan leaped upon him. His 
hunger satisfied, he tramped a pile of leaves into a 
bed, and slept. 

At sunrise he chased an early rabbit into an im- 
penetrable, frost-incrusted brier patch. He rushed 
another covey, that flew away like the wind. He 
sat down on his haunches and with ears erect watched 
the distant, whirling specks scatter into the woods. 
He was helpless in the daylight without man and 
gun. He remembered a white- tiled butcher shop on 
upper Broadway, and licked his chops at the recol- 
lection. 

At midday, a hungry tramp, he approached a 
farmhouse. A big shepherd dog met him. When the 
fierce mix-up was over, and the shepherd had re- 
treated, Dan carried in his shoulder a long, deep 
cut. Impelled by the gnawing in his stomach, he 
limped toward a log cabin. A troop of black children 
ran screaming at sight of him, and a black man 
burst out of the cabin door with a gun. As he 
turned and bounded away, a shot stung his rump. 


6 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


and others hummed around him. He made for the 
woods, a pack of yelping curs on his trail. 

From this time he avoided the habitations and 
highways of man, keeping to the woods and streams, 
turning reluctantly aside at the smell of a human 
being. Now and then he picked up a stray chicken; 
twice he fought inquisitive hounds; always his nose 
pointed like a compass toward the place where the 
sun set. He no longer resembled the dog that had 
graced the canine parade on Riverside Drive. He 
was gaunt, torn, caked with mud. His proud tail 
followed the curve of his haunches; he carried his 
head low to the ground; in his eyes gleamed hunger 
and outlawry. Freedom had exacted its price. 

Near the close of the third day there was borne 
on the slight wind the smell of a man. Toward it he 
cautiously slunk, in his heart a desperate, gnawing 
loneliness. A masterless dog is like a godless man: 
there is no motivation sufficient for his struggles 
and achievements. If the dog had been full of 
meat, if a mate had trotted beside him, still he would 
have hungered for the countenance and voice of a 
master. ' 

Suddenly he sank to the ground and looked keenly 
ahead. A young human three feet high, bare and 
frowsy of head, stood alone in the woods. His body 
was shaken by dry sobs, as if the tear supply had 
long since been exhausted. Now and then he 
looked fearfully around at the darkening shadows. 


7 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

Plainly, he was lost; plainly, he needed protection. 
Therefore the big dog advanced with ingratiating tail. 

The man-child shrieked, turned, and ran, his terri- 
fied red face turned over his shoulder. He tripped, 
fell headlong, scrambled to his feet, picked up a stick, 
and faced about like a little cave man. The dog still 
advanced wagging his tail, throwing his ears far back, 
crawling contritely on his belly, begging in every way 
he could beg to be allowed to serve this offspring of a 
man. 

The pantomime won. The boy dropped his stick. 
The dog went to him and gazed longingly into the 
tear-reddened eyes. Humbly he licked the chubby 
hands, then the tear-soaked face. The boy smiled 
with a dawn of trust, put his hand testingly on the 
shaggy head, then round his neck. The dog sank to 
his haunches, his tail stirring the leaves. The boy 
gave a convulsive hug. Dan VI knew that his 
wanderings were over. 

Far the child must have wandered from home, and 
suffered much, for, terror removed, he curled up in 
the leaves and fell asleep, the dog’s warm body curled 
up beside. Suddenly Dan sprang up. From the 
sunset came the ringing of a bell. Perhaps this bell 
called this lost boy. Dan sat on his haunches, ele- 
vated his nose like an aircraft gun, and began to bay. 

For an hour he answered the bell. Then there 
came through the woods the crash of running foot- 
steps, and a young man burst into view, his clean- 


8 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


shaven face drawn and anxious. He stooped, picked 
the boy up, felt his arms and legs, laughed out loud. 
He lifted the boy to a broad shoulder and started 
for the bell. 

“ Come along,” he said to the dog. 

The bell was still ringing when they came in sight 
of a big house set on a high hill, with oak trees in the 
yard and barns behind. The man shouted; the bell 
ceased; a slender young woman came running 
toward them, followed by a fat old black woman who 
waddled as she ran. The young woman snatched 
the boy from the man’s shoulder, and Dan knew 
from the crooning noises she made that she was his 
mother. Not until they were within a spacious 
fire-ruddied room did she notice the dog. She set the 
boy wonderingly down. 

“Where did he come from?” she gasped. 

The man laughed. “From Mars, I guess. He 
guided me to Tommy.” 

“Oh — you beauty! You wonder!” She stooped 
suddenly and caught the big head between her hands. 
Her eyes were bright and soft. “You noble, noble 
dog!” 

Dan drew back. Why all this feminine fuss? 
Self-consciously he dropped his tail, imploringly he 
looked up at the man. The man understood. He 
poked the dog with his foot, and Dan started back 
with a mock snarl. Embarrassment vanished, equi- 
librium was established, they were placed at once 


9 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

on that footing of good-fellowship so necessary in 
the highest relations of man and man and man and 
dog. 

“Sob stuff,” laughed the man, “rattles him.” 

“Do you think we can keep him, Steve?” the 
woman pleaded. 

“Of course.” 

“But suppose his owners come after him!” 

“I tell you, Marian, he dropped from Mars. I 
know every bird dog fifty miles around. There’s no 
such breed in this country. One minute.” 

He crossed the floor to a closet. When he turned 
he held in his hand a gun. 

At the sight the dog leaped up into the man’s 
laughing face. He ran round and round the room, 
his eyes brilliant, his nose quivering. The man put 
the gun away. 

“To-morrow,” he said significantly. 

They named him Frank. In a week his old life was 
a memory, a disturbed memory, though, such as 
sometimes lingers after a grotesque dream. He had 
awakened, as it were, into a new world, a new and 
glorious life. From the porch of the old homestead — 
it sat on a hill that commanded an extensive view — 
he saw in maplike demarcations fields and woods and 
bottoms, like those that had rushed past in the 
dream, lying still and silent beneath him in sunlit 
reality. 

His bondage was over. He came and went at will. 


10 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


He had his place by the fire when the night was cold. 
The strained, restless look left his eyes, and there was 
peace in his heart. Earle saw and understood. 

“You haven’t always been this way, have you, 
old man?” he asked. “I guess this is Freedom Hill 
for you, all right.” 

Frank did not know — being only a dog — the story 
that lay back of the name: the story that Earle’s 
great-grandfather on the morning the old columned 
house was completed had summoned the slaves to 
the porch and given each his freedom. 

“There will be no bondage here,” he had said. 

Dog and master took long hunts through the fair 
country that stretched away in blue undulations to 
the mountains. They returned at dusk, Earle with 
bulging game pockets, gun stuck under his arm, the 
setter trotting at his heels. They learned to know 
each other intimately, to respect each other’s ability. 

“One in a million, that dog,” was Earle’s verdict. 

A sense of power, of superabundant life, of fulfil- 
ment tingled in his nerves and bones during these 
hunts. What joy came with the knowledge that his 
nose was growing keener, his judgment more pro- 
found! What added joy that his master knew — his 
master, stern and unrelenting when he was careless, 
generous with praise when he did well. 

He developed fine scorn for visiting huntsmen who 
missed frequent shots — old Squire Kirby and John 
Davis, neighbours; sportsmen from afar, drawn to 


11 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

Breton Junction by the field trials held every year. 
How his master towered above them ! How well he 
knew the crack of his master’s gun! How well he 
knew there was a bird to retrieve when it spoke. He 
welcomed competition with man and dog. His nose 
like his master’s gun was peerless in the field. 

But hunting did not fill his life — there were idle 
days when he sauntered about at will. There was his 
sunny spot near the big rock chimney on the south- 
ern side of the house. There was his box underneath 
the back porch, filled always with clean straw, into 
which he could crawl on bleak days and listen to the 
rain spouting from the gutters and to the wind 
mourning around the corners. 

Every shrub in the yard, every ancient oak, the 
wide-hailed barn, the cribs filled with corn, the 
woodshed boarded up on the west, the blacksmith 
shop where Earle repaired the tools, all took on the 
intimate kindliness of home. He grew to be a priv- 
ileged character with the very animals on the place. 
He took his privileges as his due, even treating with 
amused condescension the fat black woman in the 
kitchen, who fussed and spluttered like her frying 
pans when he entered, but who never drove him out. 

No living creature, however, not even a well- 
used bird dog, knows perfect peace. With the close 
of the hunting season, Tommy Earle, whom he had 
found in the woods, took him boisterously in hand. It 
was a season when a hard-worked bird dog stretches 


12 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


himself out to the lazy warmth of the sun, and pads 
with flesh his uncomfortably lean, hard muscles. 

The persecution began a little timidly, for even 
Tommy could not be insensible to the latent power 
of those muscles and fangs. But when no punish- 
ment followed, it increased until there was no rest in 
the yard for the dog. He had never been accustomed 
to children. It galled him to be straddled as if he 
were a hobby horse; it reflected on his dignity to be 
yanked about by the ears and turned round by the 
tail. He realized that viciousness played no part 
in the annoyances, the demand was simply that he 
metamorphose himself into a boon companion. This 
he steadfastly refused to do. 

Many times — his nose was on a level with Tom- 
my’s frowsy head — he looked sternly, even men- 
acingly, into those irresponsibly bright blue eyes, 
but with no effect whatever. There were other times 
when the red Irish flared up, and he sprang back, 
strongly tempted to snap and snap hard. But al- 
ways he reflected that master and mistress set a high 
valuation on the little biped. And Frank would 
have been a gentleman if he hadn’t been a dog. 

Self-control embitters a small spirit — it ennobles 
a large one. His forbearance was not without its 
reward. He found himself, partly through the 
virtue of necessity, growing indulgent. On that 
lonely plantation what outlet did the child have for 
his playmania? The dog remembered that in a 


13 


TEE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

former kennel life a puppy had incessantly chewed 
his ears. Perhaps he had been that way himself — 
all young animals are. And what was this creature, 
in spite of the fact that he ran upright instead 
of on all fours, and wore small overalls made for 
him by his mother, what was he but an active young 
animal? 

Then instinct told him that on occasion Tommy 
would be loyal to the death. This was evidenced by 
the fact that Tommy once savagely fought a visiting 
boy who threw a stone into his box. Again, when 
enticed by the wanderlust of spring, he was gone 
three days, it was Tommy who, like the prodigal’s 
father, spied him from afar and came running down 
the lane to welcome him eagerly home. 

“No wonder he ran off,” said Earle. “You worry 
him to death ! ” 

Tommy looked up, past the belt, along the soft 
shirt, to the face bent down upon him like a disap- 
proving providence. When he turned his eyes on the 
dog, there was wonderment in them as if perhaps the 
truth were dawning. Certainly for days he followed 
the dog around, plainly apprehensive that he would 
run off again. And Frank, far more ready to forget 
grievances than to remember them, began to watch 
him in his incessant play, even to take part on occasion. 

Spring passed, summer came, and Earle was a 
busy man on the farm. The dog either followed him 
to the field, or sauntered about the yard with lolling 


14 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


tongue. He grew stouter, his coat glossier, his mus- 
cles more stanch. He grew sedate, too, like a gentle- 
man of broad estates. More and more his face bore 
that stamp of magnanimity that comes only to noble 
breeds. 

So things might have gone to the end, and Earle 
declared he dropped in from Mars, and Marian con- 
tended that he was sent to find her boy, and Tommy 
cared not where he came from so he was there. So 
things might have gone if Frank had not followed 
the buggy to Breton Junction. 

For two weeks previous he had been growing 
restless. Long, cold nights, frosty mornings, gaudy 
colours here and there in the woods, a haze as of 
burning brush in the air — all these pointed to one 
conclusion: another hunting season was rolling majes- 
tically around. On the very night previous Earle 
had oiled the gun, Marian had patched the old hunt- 
ing coat. Tommy had smeared the hunting boots 
with grease, and Frank had been let in to the fire to 
witness the performance. 

He had never been allowed to follow the buggy 
to Breton. “It corrupts the morals of a dog to loaf 
around a railroad station,” Earle had always said. 
But this morning he stole secretly after the buggy, 
and trotted under the rear axle unobserved by Earle 
and Tommy. A mile down the road he thought it 
safe to show himself. He ran eagerly around the 
buggy, as if he had suddenly conceived the idea of 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 15 

going with them, had just overtaken them, and had 
no doubt whatever of his welcome. 

“Go back!” ordered Earle. 

He stopped, ears thrown back, with that banal 
expression on his face of a dog pretending not to 
understand. The histrionic excellence of the per- 
formance was not lost on Tommy, who laughed 
out loud. 

“Let him go, Popper.” 

“All right — you rascal!” 

Frank ran ahead, barking up into the blazed face 
of the sorrel. Five miles farther from the crest of a 
hill they looked down on the village of Breton 
Junction, with the squat, sunlit roof of the station 
in the middle — box cars grouped about, semaphore 
above, and long lines of telegraph poles that came 
from out the south and disappeared into the north — 
one of those small centres in a vast nerve system that 
controls the activities of a continent. 

At sight of station and box cars, at the sound of a 
freight engine hissing lazily, Frank came back to 
the buggy and looked up inquiringly into the faces of 
man and boy. When at a store awning Earle tied 
the horse, he followed close at their heels, confidence 
suddenly gone out of him. Association and instinct 
stirred vague recollections of a former life. Whence 
came that hissing engine? Where led those long 
flashing rails that disappeared into the blue of 
distant hills? 


16 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


In a littered room, heated by a pot-bellied stove, 
with an instrument on a table that rattled monoto- 
nously like a mechanical species of cricket, a man 
handed Earle a crate of shotgun shells. Then 
twinkling, he looked down at the wide-eyed boy and 
the big red dog who stuck close to the boy. 

“Steve, which do you think most of? Dog or 
boy?” 

Earle laughed. “Hard to tell, Bill. On the 
whole, Tommy takes precedence.” 

“Ever find out where the dog came from?” 

“No; and that’s not all, Bill — I don’t want to. 
All right, young man, let’s get back home.” 

Frank sprang out of the door and ran for the 
buggy. His fears had vanished with the turning of 
his back on this reminder of things past. But when 
Earle and Tommy did not follow, he came dejectedly 
back. Tommy wanted to wait and see the train; he 
had never seen but one, he pleaded — that was a 
“fate” train. Far down the track a fateful whistle 
blew. Above them, the semaphore dropped with 
a clang. 

“Come, F’ank!” shouted Tommy, dancing with 
excitement. 

On the platform the boy took firm hold of provi- 
dence as represented by Steve Earle’s big forefinger 
with one hand and clutched the dog’s mane with the 
other, lest the “suction” all children fear draw him 
under the grinding wheels. He felt the solid earth 


TEE DESTINY OF DAN VI 


17 


under his feet tremble as the great hissing engine 
rolled between him and the sun, the rod rising and 
falling on the terrible wheels, the engineer high above 
in a window. Then the long black baggage car — and 
in the door a man in a cap, who looked at them with 
open mouth as if he knew suddenly who they were. 
As the train stopped, the baggageman jumped to the 
ground and came running back to Earle, all out of 
breath. 

“That your dog?” he demanded. 

“Sure, he’s my dog!” 

“Where’d you get him?” 

The wrinkles in the corner of Earle’s eye came 
close together. 

“Is that any of your affair?” 

But the baggageman smiled ingratiatingly, like a 
man who wanted to be friends. 

“Tell you why I ask,” he explained. “I lost that 
dog on my old run with the Coast Line. Owners 
sued the road. Road came back on me — said I had 
no business accepting him without a crate. Had to 
hunt a new job ” 

“Oh, come off!” interrupted Earle. “The Coast 
Line’s a hundred miles east.” 

“Can’t help it. That’s the dog. Watch him. 
Co m m ere — Commere, Dan. See? Knows me. Ever 
see the beat of that? I’m sorry, mister — but — if 
you don’t mind — what’s your name and address?” 

Earle had turned, and was looking at the dog under 


18 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


the truck. Then without a word he gave his name. 
The baggageman wrote it hastily in a notebook. The 
bell began to ring. The baggageman started away 
running. 

“ That’s what I call white, Mr. Earle!” he called 
as he swung aboard, waving his hand back at them 
like a man unaccountably happy and relieved. 

Earle looked down. Tommy noticed that his 
mouth was grim. 

“Come, son,” he said. 

Tommy looked at the dog with fear and with mute 
apology. In his heart was hatred of that baggage- 
man, and vain, vain regret that he had ever come to 
Breton Junction to see the train. All the way home 
the dog trotted under the axle of the buggy. In the 
days that followed a far less sagacious dog than he 
would have sensed the anxiety that disturbed the 
homestead on the hill to which his destiny had led 
him. 

There was nothing particularly extraordinary 
about a buggy turning in from the main road and 
coming up the long hill toward the house. Frank, 
basking in the morning sun, kept his eyes on it merely 
out of curiosity. But as it drew closer he rose slowly 
to his feet, his ears erect. Unreasoning antipathy 
to the couple in it raised his hair in a long tuft down 
his back. He withdrew toward the barn, his head 
over his shoulder, the sun glistening on his coat of 
silk. 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 


19 


“There he is!” cried Lancaster. 

“Dan — Dan!” shrilled the woman. 

The man jumped out of the buggy, lifted her to 
the ground, and both hurried toward him, smiling 
like old friends eager to be recognized. The woman 
extended her hand. 

“Dan!” she coaxed. 

He drew away toward the barn, his tail wagging 
sheepishly, mollified by their friendliness, wishing he 
could extend to them the welcome of the hill — but 
afraid of them and of what they represented. Steve 
Earle hurried out of the house, followed by Marian 
and Tommy, who held his mother’s hand. They 
all shook hands — all but Tommy, who withdrew 
from the group with a frightened glance at the dog. 
Then Earle and Lancaster came toward him, Lan- 
caster talking. 

“We received notice from the railroad,” he was 
saying, “and as Mrs. Lancaster and I were on our 
way to Florida, we thought we would stop over 
and make sure. The railroad has never met our 
claim.” He laughed. “You know how a railroad 
is.” 

“Is that the dog?” demanded Earle. 

“Oh, yes — undoubtedly.” 

Earle stopped. “Come, Frank,” he ordered. 

Frank hesitated, still wagging his tail. Smiling, 
Lancaster took a step toward him. A wolfish gleam 
came into the dog’s eyes. He threw his head up 


20 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


like a wild horse. Lancaster took another step for- 
ward. He turned and bounded across the field, 
down the hill to the woods. 

All day long he remained in the woods, gold with 
autumn, brilliant with many coloured leaves that 
sifted slowly to the ground and flashed for a moment 
transparent as they crossed the shafts of sunlight. 
The bell at the house tolled. The gun shot again 
and again. But not until late at night did he venture 
cautiously back, stopping in shadows like a big red 
fox come to rob the chicken roost. 

He trailed the buggy off to the main road and 
toward Breton Junction. He returned to find his sup- 
per waiting on the back steps. Profoundly grateful, 
he crawled into his box. But at daybreak Earle 
came out, fastened a collar round his neck, led him 
by a chain to the corner of the front porch, and 
there fastened him. The cook brought him his 
breakfast. 

It was his last meal there, she declared bluntly. 
That rich man and his wife were going to take him. 
They had spent the night at Breton Junction. They 
would be back directly. He had too much sense for a 
dog, anyhow. He made her feel spooky. She laughed. 
She was a big, bluff black woman. To her a dog was 
a dog. 

Frank ran his nose over the food, but his stomach 
revolted. He shivered with cold and fear. Down 
the hill he watched the morning mists lift from the 


21 


TEE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

maplike demarcation of field and wood, revealing 
the rich pageantry of an autumn morning. He knew 
every spot that birds frequented in all that gorgeous 
country. 

In the living room above him he could hear Earle 
poking the fire. He could hear the low mumble of 
his voice, the soft treble of Marian’s. They avoided 
him now as if he were a plague. He did not try to 
make it out. His master was providence. He could 
not question the decrees of providence, but he would 
circumvent them if he could. Once he had broken 
a collar. He began to plunge, but was jerked 
back, coughing and choking. He lay down, and 
with his paws tried to pull the collar over his 
head. Worn out at last, he crawled underneath the 
house. 

Then came a guarded tap-rap down the front 
steps. From under the porch he saw blue overalls 
and stubby shoes. They hugged the porch, they 
made their way toward him. Then Tommy squatted 
down and peered with solemn face into the shadow. 

“F’ank,” he whispered fearfully. 

The dog went to him and licked the chubby hands 
and the soft cheek, as he had licked them that first 
day. With a secret look all about, Tommy began 
to work with the fastening of the chain, his tongue 
poking through his lips and wiggling. The spring 
was strong, the thumb that pressed feeble, numb with 
cold. Once it clicked, and Tommy bit down on his 


£2 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

tongue, and the dog sprang forward. The fastening 
caught, the boy gasped — then frantically began to 
press. 

“What’re you doing there?” 

He dropped the chain; both conspirators looked 
up with a jerk. Earle’s face was poked over the 
banisters above them. 

“ Nuffin ! ” The lie was shiveringly spoken. 

“ Come in the house, sir.” 

The mother came out and caught the boy by the 
hand. Her face was distressed. She cast a pitying 
look at the dog; then she pulled his would-be rescuer 
away. 

“Ain’t he our dog?” pleaded Tommy. 

“No, dearest, he belongs to Mrs. Lancaster.” 

“Well, I can take him a jink of water, can’t I?” 

“He doesn’t want any water.” 

The dog heard the little shoes hit each step twice. 
Of all the depressing signs of that depressing morning, 
the last protesting wail as the front door smothered 
it was the most ominous. Defeated, humbled, the 
dog slunk back underneath the porch. 

But at sight of the hated buggy, he plunged and 
charged, frothing like a mad dog, running backward, 
trying to jerk the collar over his head, rolling over 
and over in his frantic struggles. Not until people 
were grouped above him did he grow quiet. Then 
when his former mistress stooped down and petted 
him, he begged her with his eyes as he had begged 


23 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 

her in that other life, and knew, as he had known 
then, that she did not understand. 

14 1 wonder what’s the matter with him?” she said. 

“It’s plain enough what’s the matter,” replied 
Lancaster. 

“Would you sell him?” asked Earle eagerly. 

She straightened up. “No, indeed; we would not 
think of that.” 

“Then,” said Earle wearily, “suppose we go in to 
the fire. You have a couple of hours to wait.” 

But he and Lancaster lingered near the porch 
while the women went into the house. 

“I’ve just learned,” Lancaster was saying, “that 
this is the plantation where the field trials are run. 
Have you thought of entering Dan?” 

“No,” said Earle. “Frank’s an old-fashioned 
shooting dog. The greatest one I ever saw. He 
doesn’t seem to have had field trial training.” 

Lancaster laughed. “Between you and me, until 
he came out here, most of his training was designed 
to fit him for a lap dog.” 

They went into the house, still talking. 

The dog heard chairs dragged across the living-room 
floor. He slunk again underneath the porch. Then 
he heard a scraping sound behind him, and turned 
quickly about with pricked ears. Under the house, 
from the direction of the kitchen. Tommy Earle was 
crawling toward him on hands and knees. 

The boy lost no time. He sat up straddle-legged 


FRANK OF FREEDOM MILL 


U 

like a tailor, and pulled the dog’s head on his knee. 
Frank’s eyes were green with excitement, foam rose 
from his bruised throat, his tail beat a tattoo on the 
dried dust. 

First the boy attempted to unfasten the collar, 
but the leather was stiff, the buckle rusty. Then 
he tried to press the spring in. Once, like a dumpy 
animal, he crawled away. But he came back with a 
brickbat and hammered like a blacksmith at the 
spring. Then he bent over, caught the fastening 
savagely in his teeth, and gritted down. A sobbing 
intake of breath announced failure. 

Time, precious time, was passing. People some- 
where in the house were growing restless. The dog 
felt his self-control slipping in a mad desire to plunge 
at the chain. He started to rise, but the boy caught 
him angrily by the ear and jerked his head back into 
place. Chairs were pushed back in the living room. 
Down the back steps came a rapid, clumsy, heavy 
tread. Then the loud, coarse voice of the cook. 

“Tommee — Tommee! I wonder whar dat chile 
gone to!” 

The front door opened with a burst of voices. 
Enemies of freedom were closing in from every side. 
Freedom and slavery hung in the crimson pressing 
thumb. The cook’s voice burst raucously — she was 
peering with rolling eyes underneath the house. * 

“Lawsy, Mr. Steve! Dat chile turnin’ dat dawg 
loose!” 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 


25 


The fastening clicked. The boy gasped, the 
dog sprang up. No chain jerked him back. He 
leaped past the cook, who held her wide skirts out 
as if to catch him in a net. He heard Earle call. He 
heard Lancaster laugh. The field flew under him, 
the woods drew near. Long after he had reached 
them he galloped on and on. 

In the afternoon he returned to the edge of the 
woods. He saw Earle come down the back steps, 
peer into the box, and shake his head at Marian, who 
stood on the back porch. Then Earle walked round 
to the old south chimney in the sun and knocked 
out his pipe, straightened up, and called. A fine 
figure of a man — his call carried command in every 
tone! To resist the overwhelming impulse toward 
obedience, the dog sank to the ground, his tail shaking 
the leaves, his eyes bright with worship of yonder 
man — and with a glint of humour in them, too. 
Did they think he would twice walk into the same 
trap! 

But as the shadows climbed the hill toward the 
house his gaunt stomach, no less than his heart, 
longed to cross that intervening field. The west 
windows flamed with the sunset, as if the whole in- 
terior were a mass of silent fire. Smoke rose from 
the kitchen chimney, and on the cold air came the 
whiff of frying bacon. The cook waddled down the 
back steps, a tin bucket flashing under her arm, and 
the chickens flocked round her like fringes to her 


26 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

skirt. But still the dog remained in the woods, 
with the hunger in his stomach and the longing in 
his heart. 

Then, when the cook had gone back, chickens van* 
ished, the glow grown dim in the windows, and life 
seemed to have ceased in the yard, a little figure 
darted across it, disappeared in the lot, reappeared 
in the back door of the barn, and with a backward 
glance made for the woods where he lay. He had 
run away, plainly, for he had on neither overcoat nor 
hat. He was frightened, for he stopped a hundred 
feet away from the woods and his voice quavered. 

“F’ank?” 

He listened painfully, his mouth open, his chest 
heaving. When next he called there were tears in 
his voice. Finally, he looked all up and down the 
border of the woods. A third time he called, shriller, 
more tremulously. Then slowly he turned his back 
and started toward the house. Something must have 
blinded him, for he stumbled and fell. He got to his 
feet and looked at the hands he must have cut on 
the sharp stones of the field. Again he faced about 
and looked up and down the woods, and again he 
turned away. 

Something tragic in this last turning about, some- 
thing final, as if he had left hope behind him buried 
in the woods, swelled the tender heart of the watching 
dog. He could stand it no longer. Lightly he leaped 
the fringe of bushes, silently he galloped after the 


THE DESTINY OF DAN VI 


n 


disconsolate little figure. Not until his warm breath 
on the nape of the white neck caused Tommy to 
turn, did he realize the depth of woe through which 
Tommy had passed. The frightened gasp, the look 
of terrible reproach, the tear-soiled face, the tragic 
eyes, told the story. It was fully a minute before 
Tommy controlled his sobs and hugged him round 
the neck. Then, ashamed to have been seen in this 
hour of weakness, the boy began to pound the dog 
with his fists. Finally he cried out — and in the 
shrill exultation of his voice, Frank knew that his 
own troubles and Tommy’s troubles had all passed 
away. 

“They gone — they gone on the chain!” Then, 
with wistful wonderment, “Where you been, F’ank?” 

There were lights in the living-room and kitchen 
windows when they started toward the house, the 
boy’s hand tightly clutching the mane of the dog. 

“Mr. Lancaster,” Tommy was explaining in a 
breathless voice that caught, “he says — he says you 
b’long to us! He says he come down an’ hunt wif 
me an’ you an’ Popper! He says he give — give 
me a dun ! ” 

In his ecstasy he grabbed the dog round the neck. 

“ 01’ F’ank ! 01’ F’ank ! I love ol’ F’ank ! ” 

Then in a voice he was training for future fox 
hunts Tommy Earle yelled, and the woods and the 
house and the barn between them tossed back and 
forth the thin echoes. 


II 


PARADISE REGAINED 
TLE Tommy Earle stood on tiptoe in the 



rear of the capacious hall of his father’s barn, 


and glanced excitedly along the nickel-plated 
barrel of his air rifle, which he had poked through 
a knot hole. Out there on the ground between the 
barn and the corn field he had sprinkled some crumbs 
of bread. When sparrows came to pick up those 
crumbs — well, thought Tommy, it would be hard 
on the sparrows. 

Behind him in the straw that carpeted the barn 
lay old Frank, Irish setter, taking his ease. Except 
during hunting season, wherever you found the boy 
you found old Frank. Now and then, at some slight 
movement of the boy, he pricked his ears in the direc- 
tion of this miniature stalker of game. The rest of 
the time he either dozed off, or, suddenly aroused, 
snapped at a fly with that fierce look in his eyes 
with which dogs and fly-swatting women view these 
buzzing pests. 

Cathedral-high above them towered the over- 
flowing hay loft. Through the wide-open doors 


PARADISE REGAINED 


29 


behind them the barn lot blazed in the afternoon 
sun. The somnolence of a farmyard mid-afternoon 
brooded over the scene. Only the boy, peering 
through the knothole, was tense and vibrant. 

For him this was a serious occasion. He had 
owned the air gun two weeks now, and he hadn’t 
killed a thing. True, he had hit an upstairs win- 
dow pane, but he hadn’t intended to do that. He 
had merely shot at a raucous jaybird in a tree, and 
the upstairs window pane, the innocent bystander, 
as it were, had fallen inward with a sharp tinkle of 
broken glass. The mishap had brought down on him 
the warning from his father that if it, or any similar 
exploit, were repeated, the air gun would be con- 
fiscated. 

“But I didn’t mean to, Papa!” he had cried. 

“That doesn’t make any difference, old man,” 
Steve Earle had said; “the window is broken all the 
same.” 

The boy had walked away from the interview, 
sobered. Sprung from the loins of generations of 
hunters, the love of a gun was in his blood, and this 
air rifle was his first love. Since the warning he 
had used the horizon as a backstop for all his shots. 
Old Frank, who had followed him around at first, 
pricking his ears at every shot, ready to bring in the 
game, had concluded that there would be no game 
to bring in, and had lost interest at last. 

Then, just an hour ago, the boy had hit upon this 


30 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

scheme of baiting sparrows to their doom. And 
now with the patience of the born hunter, tireless 
like the patience of the cat watching at the mouse 
hole, he waited for sparrows to come. His face was 
flushed, his eyes were shining, the smooth muscles 
of his bare, sturdy legs were knotted as he stood 
a-tiptoe, peering. 

Now, Steve Earle, the father, was not only a 
mighty hunter, a bigger edition merely of the boy — 
he was also a modern, successful planter. His corn 
and tobacco and cotton crops were the talk of the 
county; his horses were pedigreed; his mules sleek; 
his chickens the finest. Among these latter was a 
prize-winning Indian Game super-rooster named 
Pete. He was big, boisterous, stubborn, and swollen 
with pride and vainglory. 

It was Pete who now appeared through the aisles 
of the tall corn, within range of Tommy’s periscopic 
vision, chortling and boasting to the sober harem 
that followed him. Suddenly he raised his head; his 
beady eyes glittered; he hurried greedily toward the 
crumbs, squawking hoarsely, clucking wildly, like a 
crude fellow who aspires to be a gallant and overdoes 
the part. 

“Shoo!” cried Tommy through the porthole. 

Pete raised his head high and cackled in amazed 
indignation that anybody should say such a thing 
to him. Then, dismissing this temporary annoyance 
of a small boy yelling at him through a knothole. 


PARADISE REGAINED 


31 


he hurried into the very midst of the crumbs. He 
picked one up; he turned round to the hens; he 
dropped it to demonstrate what he had found. The 
hens cackled in admiration of the splendid perform- 
ance. 

At this Pete went crazy; his clucking increased 
prodigiously; he pawed crumbs into the ground, just 
to show how grandly careless he could be in the midst 
of such profusion. And here came all the hens to 
him, half flying like a covey of quail about to alight. 

“Shoo!” yelled the boy a second time. 

Again Pete cried out indignantly, as if he really 
didn’t know what to make of such impertinence. 
Crimson of face, Tommy left his lookout. Frank 
following, he ran round the barn and burst into the 
midst of the feasters. A wild scattering ensued. 
Cackling and squawking, the valiant Pete led the 
retreat through the corn. Face still flushed, Tommy 
came back to his post and poked his gun through 
the knothole. And once more, after a very brief 
interval, here came Pete. 

To analyze the motives that led to his return would 
require a knowledge of rooster psychology, if any 
such thing exists. Maybe Pete actually forgot what 
had just happened — his head was very small, his 
face very narrow, and he had a receding forehead. 
More likely, though, his enormous vanity lay at the 
bottom of it. He would show these wives of his, 
in whose admiration he basked all the day long, 


32 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

whether or not he was to be thwarted in his purpose 
of eating crumbs by a meddling boy with some kind 
of shiny instrument in his hand. 

Yet once more, when Tommy burst upon him and 
into the midst of his admirers, he threw all semblance 
of dignity aside. He ran ingloriously away, jumping 
high into the air when clods of dirt like exploding 
bombs struck near him, and hitting the ground again 
on the run, with loud cackles of indignation and wild 
excitement. 

“Sick him, F’ank!” screamed the boy. “Sick 
him!” 

But old Frank sat down on his haunches panting, 
which is a dog’s way of shaking his head. To injure 
his master’s property, even at an order from his 
master’s offspring, was something which he, as a dog 
of honour, could never think of doing. He did look 
with a touch of regretful longing at the fleeing rooster; 
he pricked his ears, his eyes grew fierce, he licked his 
chops. There had been a time, perhaps — but that 
was long ago, in the dim past of his irresponsible 
puppyhood. 

“You ain’t no ’count!” said the boy. 

The long silken ears flattened; the brown eyes 
looked indulgently into the angry blue ones. He 
could stand such an accusation very well; his charac- 
ter was thoroughly established, his life an open book. 
Just now the boy was beside himself with anger, and 
a friend passes over things said in anger. Only a 


PARADISE REGAINED 33 

small spirit without magnanimity is touchy on such 
points. 

Tail waving gently, therefore, he followed the 
outraged boy back to the barn. The crumbs were 
all gone. The nimble bills of the hens, the greedy, 
overbearing beak of the rooster, had gobbled them all 
up. Resentfully, Tommy picked up his shiny air 
rifle and went to the house after more. 

In the spacious kitchen, hung with pots and pans, 
old Aunt Cindy, big, fat, black, her head tied up in a 
red bandanna handkerchief, sat churning butter and 
singing a hymn: 

“Dere was ninety an’ nine dat safely lay 
In de shelter ob de foP, 

But one had wandered fur away. 

Fur from de streets ob goP.” 

At sight of the boy’s flushed face, and in the pres- 
ence of his eager request, hymn and churning ceased 
together. 

“What you gwine do wid mo’ bread, honey?” she 
asked. 

“I’m going to kill some birds,” declared the boy 
with a burst of optimism, forgetting for the moment 
that Pete might have decreed otherwise. 

The old woman rose chuckling from her churn 
and waddled across the floor to the cupboard, no 
bigger and broader than she. 

“Whar you baitin’ ’em, honey?” she asked next. 


34 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Behind the barn!” 

She sat down, bread in hand, pulled him to her, 
and patted his back. That was the price he had 
always to pay for bread or butter or jam. Finally, 
she gave him the bread and let him go. Down the 
back steps he came, running eagerly and calling 
Frank. Once more in the kitchen began the flop 
of the churn, once more rose the wail of the song. 

“Away on de mountings he heered its cry, 

Sick an’ helpless an* ready to die ” 

Twice more did Tommy drive the intolerable 
rooster away. The first time he chased him deep 
into the corn, almost to the pasture. The second 
time he tried to corral him and the hens and drive the 
whole bunch into the chicken yard, running here 
and there with eager face and outstretched hands. 

He almost succeeded, for Frank helped him at this 
like a collie dog herding sheep. Right to the gate 
of the chicken yard Pete went, followed by the excited 
hens. Then he seemed to suspect some sort of trap 
or hidden mine in there, and, with loud ejaculations, 
broke away and ran streaming toward the corn, 
followed by the hens. 

Grim of face, the boy took his stand once more at 
the knothole. Boastful as ever, after an interval, 
came Pete. Not only to-day, but to-morrow and the 
next day and through all the days to come, he would 


PARADISE REGAINED 35 

have to give up shooting sparrows because Pete 
liked bread crumbs. 

“Shoo!” he said for the last time, rather quietly 
now. 

“Caw, caw!” retorted Pete, throwing up his 
head. 

The shiny sight of the air rifle glistened against 
the beady, vicious, triumphant eye, cocked a little 
sideways. “Ping!” spoke the air rifle. In a stall a 
frisky young mule wheeled around and kicked the 
bars continuously like a rapid-fire gun. Old Frank, 
who had lain soberly down, sprang to his feet with 
pricked ears and eager eyes. From without came a 
hoarse, faint squawk and heavy flopping of wings. 
Out of breath, Tommy turned round. “I hit him, 
F’ank ! ” he gasped. 

Pete, big and heavy as a turkey gobbler, was 
flopping round and round when they reached him, 
beating the ground with lusty wings, sliding his 
limp head along the dirt, acting crazy generally, as if 
Aunt Cindy had wrung his neck. 

“Aw, get up!” said Tommy. 

But Pete did not get up, and, sobered, the boy 
glanced around. The hens had fled the violent scene; 
the hulk of the barn hid what was going on from the 
yard. Only Frank had seen, and Frank never told 
anything. Tommy leaned his rifle against the barn, 
straddled the heavy rooster and, face flushed, lifted 
him, limp and dangling, to his feet. 


36 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Stand up, Pete,” he coaxed. “You ain’t dead!” 

But when he released him Pete collapsed like an 
empty sack, kicked frantically a time or two, and 
was still. Then the boy saw the blood that trickled 
from his head. Straight into his eye and into his 
brain, if he had any, the BB shot had gone. Pete 
would never eat any more crumbs. Breathing fast, 
the boy looked at Prank. Ears drooped, eyes wor- 
ried, Frank looked at the boy. And while they 
looked, down the back steps came the solid tread of 
Aunt Cindy’s broganned feet, and her regular after- 
noon summons broke the silence: 

“Chick! Chick! Chick!” 

Through the corn the silly hens went running 
toward the yard, their appetites nowise affected by 
the calamity. Again the old woman called. Then 
she spoke, and Tommy’s heart jumped up into his 
mouth. His father had evidently sauntered round 
the house, as fathers have a way of sauntering, just 
at the wrong time. 

“Mr. Steve — whar dat rooster?” asked the old 
woman. 

Earle laughed. “I haven’t got him, Aunt Cindy.” 

“It sho a funny thing,” she declared. “He allis 
de fust to come when dey*s anything to eat. Some- 
thin’ done happen to him. You stay here. I lay I 
kin fin’ him!” 

Tommy hastily picked up his rifle. The old 
woman was coming; he could hear her skirts dragging 


PARADISE REGAINED 


37 


across the weeds at the side of the barn. A short 
distance in the opposite direction was the corn crib. 
To the side of it away from the barn he retreated, 
followed closely by Frank. 

He heard her exclamation when her eyes fell on 
the dead rooster. 

“Honey!” she called gently, “whar you, honey?” 

He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to answer. She 
could stand there calling till night if she wanted to. 
Then he heard her grunt and sigh as she stooped 
down. When he peeped cautiously around the cor- 
ner, she had picked up the rooster and started for the 
yard. They would all know now. 

His heart grew bitter at the thought. He ought to 
have hid the rooster. He ought to have got a spade 
and buried him. He was full of regrets, not for 
what he had done, but for what he had not done. 
He would stay here till dark. He would stay here 
all night. He never would go home any more. He 
would hide in the woods, and he and Frank would 
hunt. He would kill what they wanted to eat and 
cook it over a fire. His face was set. His mind 
was full of grim little desperate outcast thoughts. 

Then his dark romance was shattered. From the 
yard his father had called him. The call seemed to 
search out this very spot, but he did not answer. 
Let them find him if they wanted him. He wasn’t 
going to them, and he wasn’t going to run, either. 
They would try to take his gun away now. There 


38 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


was a lump in his throat as he thought of the injustice 
of it, of the insults he had patiently borne, of the 
futility of explanations where grown people, who 
loved and treasured roosters above everything else, 
were concerned. 

He heard them coming through the lot and flat- 
tened himself against the wall, his eyes full of fight. 
They would have to throw him down and beat him 
into insensibility. To the end he would cling to his 
gun, asking no quarter, making no explanations. 
And thus they found him — Aunt Cindy first, then 
his father and his mother. He glanced sullenly at 
them and said nothing. 

“ Hiding, old man?” asked his father. 

At something kind and comradely in the tones 
he looked up with sudden hope beyond the belt and 
the shirt into the clean-cut face and gray, twinkling 
eyes bent down upon him. 

‘‘No, sir,” he said. “I wasn’t hidin’.” 

“Well, who killed Pete?” 

His heart began to pound in his ears; the eyes of 
his father held him; he had almost owned up; then 
it came over him, as all such things come, by inspira- 
tion. There stood old Frank, gently wagging his tail. 
Frank had nothing to lose; nothing would be done 
to Frank. Frank’s reputation was spotless; it 
could stand a stain or two. Eagerly he smiled up 
into his father’s face. 

“F’ank killed him!” he said. 


PARADISE REGAINED 


39 


For a moment the air was electric with uncertainty. 
Then his mother spoke, her eyes full of pain and 
reproach. 

“Why, dear!” 

“Honey, honey!” remonstrated Aunt Cindy, 
“you know dat dawg !” 

But a quick glance from his father silenced this 
feminine outburst. “All right, old scout,” said 
Earle gravely. “Just as you say. We’ll go back to 
the house now; and we’ll see to it that Frank doesn’t 
kill any more chickens.” 

Tommy took a deep breath; he could hardly be- 
lieve his ears. He had braced himself for fight, 
prepared himself to defend his assertion, and now 
there wasn’t going to be any fight at all. At first 
he thought his father must have understood and 
become particeps in the secret with him and Frank 
and the gun. Then it dawned on his delighted 
mind — his father actually believed what he had 
said! 

He went back to the yard with them, profoundly 
relieved, as if he were walking on air. He even had 
for a moment a virtuous feeling as if Frank had 
really killed the rooster, and he had only spoken 
the truth. Then he began to feel proud in a secret 
sort of way. It had been quite a stroke. He had 
never experimented sufficiently with this method of 
getting out of trouble. It was really quite simple. 
He would try it again some time. 


40 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


He had a vague idea that something had hurt his 
mother, and he was sorry for that. But she would 
get over it; he would be unusually loving to her. 
Really, all one had to do was to make a statement, 
and grown people would swallow it. They were easy 
marks. 

Yet, somehow, though he had won out by superior 
intelligence, he wasn’t as happy as he should have 
been. He felt some of the loneliness of genius. And 
when in the back yard his father turned and called 
Frank sternly to him, he began to fear that the af- 
fair might not be so simple after all. 

With growing uneasiness he watched old Frank 
go to Earle, tail depressed, eyes troubled. Earle 
led him to the kennel at the side of the house and 
chained him up. Frank sat down on his haunches 
and looked up into his master’s face. 

“Now,” said Earle, “I’m going to give you time 
to think about it. Then I’m going to wear you out ! ” 

“Pete ate my crumbs, Papa!” cried the boy, the 
blood rushing to his face. 

His father turned and spoke to him confidentially, 
as man to man. They would have to cure Frank, 
right now, before killing chickens got to be a habit. 
They couldn’t afford to have a chicken-killing dog 
on the place — it was too expensive. 

And that was just the beginning of his troubles 
and complications. Every afternoon since he could 
remember, he and his father and Frank had gone 


PARADISE REGAINED 


41 


to the pasture to see about the cattle. But now old 
Frank was chained up. And when his father asked 
him to come along, he shook his head. He didn’t 
want to be alone with his father. He had an idea 
that it would be terribly and silently embarrassing 
down there with no one around but the two of them. 

“I don’t want to go,” he declared. 

“Very well,” said Earle, and went off alone, 
through the lot and into the corn. 

And he got no comfort whatever out of the talk 
he had with his mother a little later in the living 
room, though she smiled at him when he entered, and 
put her sewing aside. 

Encouraged, he went to her and leaned against 
her knee; she brushed his hair back off his forehead, 
just as she always did. 

“What is it, dear?” she asked. 

“Papa ain’t goin’ to whip F’ank, is he, Mama?” 

“Why, yes — he has to.” 

“I tol’ F’ank to kill him!” 

“But Frank’s a grown dog — he knew better.” 

He grew suddenly angry — angry at her very sim- 
plicity. 

“F’ank won’t kill any more chickens!” 

“How do you know?” 

“I know!” he cried, and stamped his foot. “I 
know!” 

He came away from this futile interview in a sup- 
pressed rage. From the hall he saw old Aunt Cindy 


42 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

waddling about in the dining room. No use to 
appeal to her. She knew too much, anyhow, that old 
woman. There was in her nature none of the simple 
credulity that characterized his parents. She was 
worldly wise, like himself. 

He avoided her, therefore, his face turned over his 
shoulder, afraid she would see and call him. He 
went out on the front porch, down the steps, and, gun 
under his arm, sauntered round the house to the ken- 
nel. Old Frank came to meet him as far as the 
chain would allow. Frank thought he was going to 
be turned loose now — his eyes showed it. There 
was a log of wood beside the kennel, and the boy sat 
down on it. Frank nestled close to him, tail drag- 
ging across the ground. 

Suddenly the boy was all attention, and Frank 
had pricked his ears. Steve Earle had come from 
the pasture, gone up the back steps, and into the 
room with the boy’s mother. Through the open 
window just above the kennel he could hear them 
talking in a confidential sort of way, as grown folks 
talk when they think no one is listening. 

“Where’s the boy?” asked Earle. 

“I don’t know, Steve — he went out just now.” 

She was silent a while, then she spoke, with a little 
laugh that didn’t sound like a laugh: 

“Steve — it’s pitiful, pitiful!” 

“It’s drastic, Mother — but it’s the best way.” 

“But, Steve — suppose it doesn’t work?” 


PARADISE REGAINED 43 

It was his father who was silent now. 

“Then that will be pretty tough, Mother,” he said 
at last. 

They talked some more — meaningless grown folks’ 
talk that didn’t get anywhere. It didn’t seem to 
bear even remotely on the essential question in 
hand, which was whether or not Frank was to be 
whipped. They weren’t even interested enough in 
the matter to speak of it. They just talked — that 
was all. They didn’t care anything about him and 
Frank, or what became of them. They thought 
more of roosters than of anything else. They were 
all against him and Frank and the gun. All right — 
he and Frank and the gun would look out for them- 
selves! 

Once more his mind filled with visions of a wild 
life, in which escape and vengeance were mingled 
in proper and satisfying proportions. In the woods 
beyond the pasture was a cave, which he and Frank 
could reach before dark. Then they would ring the 
farm bell and raise a great hullabaloo, but he and 
Frank, safe within the dark cavern, would live their 
own lives. 

The more he thought of it, the more enticing it 
became, and his eyes filled with a caveman’s fire. 
The entrance to the cave was pretty dark and 
“snaky”; maybe he would compromise and not go 
in. But the woods round about were thick, and 
there were plenty of hiding places. 


44 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


He left Frank, and, heart pounding, went round 
the side of the house, looking up at the familiar 
windows high overhead. There came over him a 
scorn of the civilized existence these people led, and 
he wondered that he had endured it so long. He went 
quietly up the back steps, peeped into the kitchen, 
then entered softly. 

Old Aunt Cindy was in the dining room, which 
was separated from the kitchen by a passageway. 
He could hear the rattle of dishes in there as she set 
the table for supper. Well, there would be one seat 
empty this night, and maybe through a good many 
nights to come. He got up on a chair in front of 
the cupboard and filled his pockets with biscuits. 

All excited, he came out of the house, hurried to 
the kennel, and turned Frank loose. Frank had 
caught the contagion. Frank knew there was 
something sub rosa about what was going on, and 
his eyes were glowing. Likely they would shine 
like a cat’s eyes in the dark cave at night — and 
maybe there would be other wild eyes shining in the 
recesses that led off here and there and dripped 
with water! 

He hesitated a moment, trying to think of some 
other spot where they might run, some spot less 
suggestive of shining eyes. And while he hesitated 
there came steps on the front porch, and around the 
house, pipe in mouth, his father sauntered, as fathers 
have a way of sauntering, just at the wrong time. 


PARADISE REGAINED 45 

“What’re you doing there, Tommy?” he de- 
manded. 

The cave and the wild life vanished like a bubble 
that has burst. 

“Pete ate my crumbs, Papa!” he cried. 

For a moment his father hesitated, looking down 
into his eyes as if he were perplexed and worried and 
did not know what to do. Then once more he 
chained Frank up. 

“You mustn’t turn him loose again,” he said 
sternly. 

“I tol’ him to kill Pete! I tol’ him to!” 

“And he did it?” 

The eyes which the boy raised to the man’s face 
were full of fight. He had said it, and he was going 
to stick to it. It was no longer only a matter of 
saving the gun; it was a question of principle now. 

But his father did not press the question. With 
just a queer look into the boy’s defiant eyes, he 
turned away and walked across the yard toward the 
garage, head bowed. Tommy watched him. No 
doubt his father thought he would follow. He had 
always liked to hang about the garage, he and Frank, 
and watch his father tinker with the car. It had 
been one of the high lights of their daily life. But 
now old Frank was chained up — and as for him, he 
didn’t care anything about automobiles. 

Frank had sat down on his haunches, in his fine 
old eyes, as he watched his master’s retiring form, 


46 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

that disconsolate look of a dog whose feelings are 
deeply wounded. A moment Tommy regarded his 
offended friend. No use to think of turning him 
loose again with his father within hearing. Tommy 
hardened his heart. All right — so be it — he had done 
his part. Things would just have to take their 
course. Gun under arm, face set and grim, he 
walked round the house, and left old Frank to his 
fate. 

There was a side porch around here, where his 
mother sometimes sat in the mornings, but which 
was deserted the rest of the day. On the step he 
took his seat, a solitary little figure, his gun between 
his knees. Here he would stay until the beating was 
over, here where he could not see it, and could not 
hear it — very plainly. 

He was full to the brim of rebellious thoughts. 
He wished Pete were alive so he could shoot him 
again. He thought of boys he knew whose parents 
let them alone, and he envied them their lot in life. 
Maybe he would go and live with some of them, go 
where he would be appreciated. He would take 
Frank with him, of course; that went without say- 
ing: life would be a void without Frank. 

Yonder was the apple orchard, with the gold of the 
setting sun glancing through the tree trunks, and 
yonder in it was the brush pile where, on that mem- 
orable morning, he and Frank had “almost” caught 
a rabbit. Beyond were the woods where another af- 


PARADISE REGAINED 


47 


ternoon never to be forgotten Frank had jumped a 
red fox bent on mischief, who, his father said, would 
have got some chickens that very night if Frank 
hadn’t chased him far into the distant hills. 

Then there was the time down in the creek bot- 
toms when he had sat down on a log, and Frank 
had rushed toward him, leaped the log, and jerked 
the life out of a big copperhead moccasin coiled just 
behind him in the grass. And not very long ago, 
at the country store up the road, when a big boy 
had tried to bully him, Frank had come to his side 
and growled, and the boy had backed off, his face 
white. Frank had always stuck to him. 

His face grew solemn, a lump rose in his throat. 
He could not sit here any longer with Frank chained 
up around yonder waiting a beating. He got up 
and started once more around the house. He was 
just in time to see his father cross the yard and stop 
in front of a bush. 

He stood where he was, watching with alarmed 
eyes. When his father turned he had a switch in 
his hand. At sight of it the blood rushed to the boy’s 
face, and every nerve tingled. He had doubted it a 
little bit up to this time; now there was no doubt 
left. His father was going to whip Frank. 

Once at Tom Belcher’s store he had seen a man 
whip a dog. The dog had writhed rather comically 
on the ground, and his cries had filled the air. He 
himself had stood on the store porch and watched 


48 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


the performance in a detached, judicial frame of 
mind. It had been a spectacle, and nothing more; 
but this was vastly different. That had been an old 
hound, and this was Frank. 

That was a big switch his father had cut, and his 
father was very strong. It would hurt, hurt even 
through Frank’s long hair, hurt terribly. Frank 
would writhe on the ground, Frank’s cries would 
fill the air. He watched his father’s face as Earle 
came toward him. It was serious and grim, so 
serious that it almost hurt. Maybe his father 
didn’t want to whip Frank; maybe he was doing it 
because he thought, in his ignorance and simplicity, 
that he ought to; maybe his father hated to do it. 

He thought of retreating once more to the side 
porch where he could not see, of hurrying beyond it 
to the orchard and there crying, perhaps. But he 
could not do that. Breathing fast, he followed his 
father, led by the fascination of horror. Anybody 
looking at him, unless it was his mother, would have 
thought he was going out of curiosity, to see the 
thing well done. But there was a humming sound 
in his ears; the lump was choking him cruelly; 
the whole yard was swimming round, and everything 
looked strange. 

As they drew near the kennel, Frank rose quickly 
to his feet, his tail tapping the taut chain, his eyes 
eager and glowing as he looked from one friend to an- 
other. Frank thought they had come to turn him 


PARADISE REGAINED 


49 


loose and give him his supper in his tin plate on the 
back steps. Then he saw, and his ears drooped — saw 
the look on their faces, saw the switch, and he sank 
down on his stomach and laid his big head humbly 
between his paws at his master’s feet. 

“ Don’t ! ” shrieked the boy. “ Papa, Papa, don’t ! ” 

In the midst of the whirling yard and barns and 
things, his father had turned and looked down at him 
with strange burning eyes. 

“I can’t let him kill chickens, son.” 

It all happened in a flash. He hadn’t intended 
doing any such thing. His last resolve, even as he 
came around the house, had been to stick to his 
spoken word. But now passionately he threw the 
air rifle away from him, and stood looking up at 
his father with dilated eyes and heaving, sturdy 
chest. 

“Take the old gun!” he cried. “I don’t want it! 
I killed Pete — F’ank never done it. I shot him 
through the head ! ” 

His father had stooped down now, and he was in 
strong arms. His cheek was pressed against his 
father’s cheek, and over a broad shoulder, through a 
haze of tears, he looked miserably into the red glow 
of the setting sun. 

“I tol’ F’ank to kill him,” he sobbed brokenly, 
“an’ he wouldn’t. I drove — drove him off, an’ he 
kept cornin’ back. I killed him — I shot him through 
the head!” 


50 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

The arms tightened about him, the cheek pressed 
closer to his cheek. 

“That’s all right, old man,” said his father. “I 
understand.” 

Gradually the sobs ceased, for he fought them down 
like a little man. And when at last Earle rose, Tommy 
looked up clear-eyed into his father’s face, as he 
used to look before he ate of his forbidden fruit. 
Then his father went to the gun, picked it up, and 
came back to him. 

“It’s yours,” he said gently. 

For the second time that day Tommy could 
hardly believe his ears; his eyes were uncompre- 
hending, for he had never expected to own the gun 
again. 

“You’ve earned it,” said Earle, with a smile. 

Then, within the house, swung lustily by old Aunt 
Cindy’s strong wrist, the supper bell rang. At the 
top of the kitchen steps the mother waited with happy 
face. And up these steps, the sinking sun shining 
upon them, went father and boy and dog together. 


Ill 


THE BOLTER 

NE January afternoon there got off the train 



at a straggling little Southern town a massive 


man past middle age, with a craggy face and 
deep -set eyes, and the looks and manner of one with 
power and wealth. His name was William Burton, 
manufacturer of the famous Burton ploughs, and he 
could have bought this town out, lock, stock, and 
barrel, and the county in which the town sat, and a 
very considerable portion of the state itself. What 
he had come to buy, though, was a dog. 

During the trip down, in his stateroom, instead 
of examining financial reports or reading the latest 
magazines, old Burton had studied, with the aid of 
his spectacles and of Ferris, his professional dog 
handler, the pedigree of a young pointer that lived 
in this town. He had noted how at recurrent inter- 
vals in the family tree occurred the word Champion. 
Already, in the years since he entered, as a hobby, 
the field-trial game, he had bought, at the recom- 
mendation of handlers, some hundreds of bird dogs. 
All of them had been disappointments. Now he 


51 


52 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

had taken the matter into his own hands. Usually 
when he took charge of a thing, that thing suc- 
ceeded. 

A lazy Negro at the dreary railroad station showed 
him and Ferris the way to Jim Arnold’s place — a 
neat, modest cottage on the edge of the town from 
whose back yard, as they approached, came a chal- 
lenging bark. A telegram had preceded them, and 
Jim Arnold himself, veteran bird-dog trainer, owner 
of the young pointer, came out to meet them, hob- 
bling painfully on a stick. 

Ferris could have explained the hobble and the 
stick. It’s the kind of thing you see now and then 
among field-trial men. Earlier in the season, while 
running in a field trial the very dog who had brought 
the visitors here, his horse had fallen, crushing 
Arnold’s knee. Jim Arnold could never ride a horse 
again. Consequently, Jim Arnold could never again 
run a dog in a National Championship race. 

With the crippled man came his daughter Jessie, 
a slim, dark-eyed girl, pretty in a serious sort of way. 
Burton was hardly conscious of her, but Ferris re- 
spectfully raised his hat. Dog men knew Jessie 
Arnold because she sometimes rode with her father 
and helped him handle. She had been with him 
when his knee was crushed, and had held his head 
in her lap till the doctor came. 

After the briefest of greetings the three men, fol- 
lowed by the girl, went around to the rear yard. 


THE BOLTER 


53 


Here, in a lot enclosed by a high wire fence, wagging 
his tail like any other dog, was the National Cham- 
pionship hope. 

Great dogs, like great men, do not always look the 
part. This one did. He was a big white fellow, 
his ears and a portion of his head liver brown. His 
head was nobly carved, his back long and straight, 
his legs rangy, clean-cut, his tail thin, like a lance; 
he was all a pointer of the highest breeding ought to 
be. But to the man who knows dogs there was in 
his eyes something wild, headstrong, untamed, the 
kind of thing you see in the eyes of young aviators. 

“Let him out, Jess,” said Arnold. 

The girl opened the gate and he sprang out. He 
ran eagerly around the yard, inspecting the familiar 
premises to see if there had been any other dog there 
recently. Every motion showed unbounded power, 
as if the yard, and even the town itself, were too small 
for him. Not until Arnold called him twice, and 
severely, did he come to them. But he had no atten- 
tion to bestow upon his distinguished visitor. His 
eyes sought first his master’s face, then the face of 
the girl. There they rested a moment in adoration. 
Then he reared gently up against her, ears thrown 
back, upraised eyes affectionately searching her 
face. 

Old Burton had been looking on with impassive 
countenance. But from the moment his eyes rested 
on this dog he wanted him. His hunch told him 


54 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

that here was a champion, and he went by hunches. 
He looked at Ferris, quickly, significantly. Ferris 
nodded in a way which indicated that he would like 
to speak in private. Millionaire and handler with- 
drew a few steps from father and daughter and dog. 

“I don’t like that look in his eyes!” whispered 
Ferris vehemently. 

“I do!” said old Burton. 

In Arnold’s little over-furnished parlour the 
business was transacted. But neither the young 
pointer out there, nor the girl who remained with 
him, were to know anything about it. So far as the 
dog was concerned, man, his master and god, moves 
in mysterious ways. As for the girl, it was her father 
who requested that the trade be kept a secret from 
her. 

“She sets a lot of store by Drake,” he explained. 
“She picked him out from the litter when he was a 
pup. She’s fed him and raised him. People are 
always cornin’ to see him. She thinks that’s the 
reason you come — just to look at him.” 

Burton glanced at the crippled trainer with slightly 
hardened eyes. He resented this intrusion of the 
human element into a deal, particularly when that 
human element was a girl. It has a way of breaking 
things up. However, for a while, things went smoothly, 
though the conversation was carried on in lowered 
tones. Three thousand was the price agreed upon. 
It was a good price for Arnold to get if the dog did 


TEE BOLTER 55 

not win the championship. It was a poor price if 
he did. 

For to own a national champion means a steady 
income from his puppies. It brings fame to the 
owner and to the trainer. He has trained one 
champion — maybe he can train another. Men 
send him their dogs; his price goes up, like that of 
the teacher who had turned out a prima donna. 
To own and train a national champion may put a 
man like Arnold on the map. 

And now he was gambling with the chance. His 
face showed the strain he was under. However, 
it was he who set the price. But when Burton, 
thinking the matter closed, got out his check book, 
again the crippled trainer introduced the element 
of mystery. 

“One minute, sir,” he said. “There’s something 
I ought to tell you. I’m sellin’ Drake because I 
can’t afford to take chances on his winnin’. But I 
want him to win, sir, just the same as if he was goin’ 
to be mine.” 

“Well?” said Burton. 

“There’s one thing goin’ to stand in his way. 
After this year I think he’ll settle down. But right 
now, I’ll be honest with you, Drake’s a bolter. You 
know what a bolter is, I guess. He’s a dog that 
won’t keep in the course, that will run away. Drake’s 
one of ’em. When you turn him loose in the field 
he forgets there’s such things as human bein’s on 


56 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


this planet. Don’t I know him? I won the South- 
ern Championship with him. I managed to keep 
up and hold him in. But I come mighty nigh ridin’ 
a horse to death. Here’s the price I paid myself, 
sir,” and he tenderly felt his warped and shattered 
knee, “paid it the last five minutes of the race.” 

Burton was silent. Arnold went on : 

“There’s two people in the world Drake will lis- 
ten to: One’s me an’ the other’s Jessie. I can’t run 
him, I’m stove up. Jess is expectin’ to run him. If 
she does, he may win. If she don’t, he won’t win. 
I tell you, I know. I know that dog inside and out. 
Nobody but me or the girl can stop him when he 
gets started. He’ll hunt where he darn pleases, or 
he’ll strike a bee line for the next state. You know 
what that means, Mr. Burton. If you don’t, Ferris 
does. The judges will rule him out.” 

But old Burton wanted that big young pointer 
though there were a score of wild devils in him. He 
wanted him worse than ever now he had heard. 
He had been a bolter himself when young — had run 
away from home. He liked bolters. But, also, he 
wanted to win the championship. 

“Let the girl run him, then,” he said. “Suits me. 
I’ll pay her, and pay her well. If the dog wins, she’ll 
get the stake.” 

Arnold flushed. “She’ll run the dog, sir; but not 
for you. I mean, she won’t run him if she knows it’s 
for you. She’s a high-strung girl — and proud; she 


TEE BOLTER 


57 


mustn’t know a thing about this deal. She must 
think she’s runnin’ her dog an’ mine.” 

“Then you mean to deceive her in the matter?” 
demanded Burton. 

Again Arnold flushed. “Sometimes, Mr. Burton, 
a man has to do a thing he don’t like to do. I’ll have 
to deceive the girl until after the trial. It ain’t 
easy. I lay awake all night last night, after I got 
your telegram. It’s this way, sir. I have to tell 
you in order for you to understand: If I can tell the 
bank positively that I’ll have three thousand dollars 
in a month, I can renew a note I’ve got to renew — or 
lose the place here. That’s the reason I’m sellin’ 
Drake. But if I tell Jess now that I have sold him, 
even if she consents to run, the life won’t be in her to 
handle him. It’ll take it all out of her, sir. She’ll 
be ashamed in the midst of all them people. She’s 
a high-strung girl. 

“And that brings me to the matter of the check 
you started to write,” he went on. “I don’t want 
that check now. Ever since I was laid up Jess has 
tended to things for me. You know how women are 
when they take charge. If that check’s in the house 
she’s liable to find it. If I deposit it, in a little town 
like this, people will find it out, and somebody’ll 
blab to her. You send it to me after the trial, when 
I’m ready to explain to the girl without ruinin’ your 
prospect of winnin’, an’ Drake’s. That’s my condi- 
tion.” 


58 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

As he went up the street toward the station, Bur- 
ton heard from behind the cottage the challenging 
bark of the championship hope — his dog now. 

“Ferris,” he said, “I believe we’ve got the cham- 
pion this time. I think I’ll attend that trial myself.” 

For more than a generation, the National Cham- 
pionship, bird-dog classic of America, had been run 
near Breton Junction where, two weeks later. Burton 
got off the train and was met by Ferris. 

“Your dog’s here, sir,” was Ferris’s whispered 
greeting. “Wilder looking than ever. The girl’s 
here, too. Jim Arnold couldn’t come. Laid up 
with his knee.” 

Burton looked around. He had reached a spot 
where for a few weeks every winter the bird dog is 
undisputed king. Down the sunlit village streets 
pointers and setters were out with their handlers. 
They came from every section of the country, from 
Canada, from England. Each dog represented in 
himself the survival of the fittest. There was not 
one who had not gained a victory in some trial. 
Now they were to try for the greatest victory of 
all. 

Many were already champions with majestic 
names — champions of the South, the prairies, the 
Pacific coast. Some, younger and more eager than 
others, strained at their leashes, and looked about 
alertly at the passing show. Others, reserved vet- 
erans, gazed into space with the dignified abstraction 


THE BOLTER 59 

of those who have travelled far and seen the world 
and tasted the vanity of all things under the sun. 

On the way to the boarding-house where Ferris 
had engaged a place for him. Burton came face to face 
with his dog. He was pulling hard at the leash, held 
by the girl. She nodded and smiled quickly, wist- 
fully, at these men who had been to her father’s house 
to see her father’s dog. But she did not stop or 
speak; for so strong was the pull of the big pointer 
that she was hurried along as if a high wind were 
blowing her from behind. 

Old Burton stopped and looked back at them. His 
dog was the finest fellow of the bunch. He would 
take that dog back with him, National Champion 
tacked to his name. He would keep him in his own 
kennels, show him to his friends, run him again next 
year, own him in name as well as in fact. 

As for the girl, it would be a big disappointment 
to her when she learned the truth. But she was 
young. Young people get over things quickly. 
Besides, it was her father’s arrangement, not his. 
He wasn’t responsible. 

But when at supper in the boarding-house he saw 
her at the other end of the table, he was a bit sorry. 
This was rather too forcible a reminder of the bargain. 
He noticed that the girl was browned with Southern 
suns, but that she was pretty and looked thorough- 
bred. Also, she was very quiet, and her manners 


were nice. 


60 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

She was present again at the meeting of handlers 
and owners and club officials, who packed the par- 
lours and hall after supper. She was to be the first 
woman who ever ran a dog in a National Champion- 
ship race, he heard somebody say. It occurred to 
him that she must be pretty brave, for she didn’t 
seem to be the pushing kind. 

The order in which dogs are to run is decided by 
lot. He had hoped Drake would be drawn for the 
first week. But in the lottery Drake came on Friday. 
“Arnold’s Drake,” he heard the official read: “Owner, 
Jim Arnold; handler, Jessie Arnold — handling for her 
father.” 

“Will you stay over, sir?” whispered Ferris. 

Burton nodded. 

All day long, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, 
in morning and afternoon heats of three hours each, 
dogs were run in braces on the plantation of Steve 
Earle, who was, like his father before him, one of the 
judges. Gruelling heats they were that tested every 
nerve and fibre, run under the eyes of judges who saw 
every move. 

As for Burton, he went out to the testing ground 
but once. He was not used to hard horseback riding, 
and he wanted to be fresh on Friday. But once 
every day, either in the morning or the afternoon, he 
saw the girl set out on her pony. She was learning 
the course, getting ready for her own race. 

Most of the time when she wasn’t riding the course. 


THE BOLTER 


61 


she spent with the dog, exercising him, all alone, on 
the streets of the town. Once when Burton went out 
to the barn lot to look at him, where he waited, 
chained to his kennel, the girl came, also. He 
watched her as she stooped before the eager dog, and 
stroked his head. 

“Tired of waiting, old man?” she asked. 

Again he reared up against her and looked into her 
face. 

“Do you — er — think he will bolt?” asked Burton 
as they went back toward the house. 

She stopped and looked him straight in the eyes; 
her own were brown, frank, high-spirited, like a boy’s. 

“No!” she said bravely. “I can handle him.” 

“She’s over-confident, sir,” declared Ferris when 
the two reached Burton’s room. “She don’t know 
what she’s up against. She’s nothing but a kid. 
That dog was born a bolter, and he will die a bolter.” 

On Thursday morning the girl spoke to Burton as 
they came out of the dining room. She was going to 
take Drake out to the edge of town for a practise run, 
she said. Would he care to go along? He had 
seemed to be so interested in Drake. 

He had Ferris hire a car. One of the women of 
the house went with them. In the edge of the town 
Jessie took the dog out and, Burton and Ferris fol- 
lowing, led him into a field. Here she snapped 
the leash. 

“Go!” she cried. 


62 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

He needed no such command. Like a white meteor 
he sped across the field and dashed into the woods. 
She called him, but he did not turn. Again and again 
the shrill command of her little nickel-plated whistle 
echoed in fields and woods. At last, in the direction 
he had taken, she started running swiftly. Behind 
her hurried the two men, Burton breathing hard. 

“This will never do!” gasped Ferris. 

“Leave it to her!” commanded Burton. 

At last, on top of a ridge, half a mile away, he re- 
appeared. Three times shriller and shriller she blew, 
and now he came galloping toward them. 

“Come in!” she commanded. 

He came to her, and she caught him quickly by the 
collar. 

“I told you I could handle him!” she said proudly. 

But her eyes were dilated. She was quiet on the 
ride home. She was silent at the table. 

Ferris joined his boss when the latter went to his 
room. Ferris stopped with the postmaster down the 
street, as he had stopped for twenty years when he 
was handling other men’s dogs. 

Ferris was depressed. That showing, he said, was 
terrible. If he bolted to-day, what would he do 
to-morrow, with another dog to spur him on and the 
crowd to excite him. They ought to do something — 
warn her, advise her. 

Burton smoked away. “Suppose we just leave 
it to the girl, Ferris,” he said quietly. 


THE BOLTER 


63 


She was gone when next morning he came down 
to breakfast. She had left with the wagon that 
hauled her dog to the place of trial, the other diners 
said. Not once during the night or the morning had 
she let him out of her sight. 

The crowd, all mounted, had gathered at the be- 
ginning of the course when Burton and Ferris rode up 
that brilliant winter morning. And a little to one 
side, standing beside a wagon in which were two 
dog’s crates, one containing Arnold’s Drake, the 
other Count Redstone, his brace mate, stood the girl. 

At her side a wiry Texas pony waited patiently. In 
a scabbard on the saddle was strapped a twenty- 
gauge shotgun. 

The girl looked small, slight, and brown in her rid- 
ing suit. Underneath a roughrider hat Burton 
glimpsed her face as she looked off across the fields 
that marked the beginning of the course. Though 
brave and composed, it showed the strain she was 
under. In that crate nearest her, as she thought, 
was the hope of her crippled father. 

Burton noticed that she did not glance up at the 
people about her, or speak to them. Her eyes were 
fixed on those sunlit straw fields, so soon to be 
her battleground. He liked her silence. From the 
beginning she had played the game — had asked no 
odds because she was a woman. He thought of his 
own youngest daughter. Suppose she were standing 
there, as that girl stood! 


64 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


When the three judges rode up, she herself lifted 
the big pointer out of the crate. Once more he 
reared up on her, once more her hand stroked his 
head. Then, at a command of the judges, she was 
leading him into the field, her pony following; at her 
side walked the handler of Count Redstone, and in 
front of him, the Count strained at his leash. 

“Are you ready?” asked the senior judge. 

Count Redstone’s handler, a bronzed, gray-haired 
veteran, said “Ready!” as he had said it a hundred 
times. The girl merely looked up at the judge and 
nodded. 

“Let go!” ordered the judge. 

Burton saw the dogs dash away. The girl, like an 
athlete, sprang into her saddle. Both handlers 
galloped after their dogs. Behind followed the 
judges, then, after an interval, the field, among them 
old Burton, his heart beating fast. The fight was 
on — but it was more than a fight between dogs. It 
was a conflict between a girl’s will and the wild 
heritage in a dog’s nature. 

The dogs have to be kept within a course some 
half-a-mile wide and many miles long. If a dog gets 
out of the course and is lost for a length of time — 
that varies according to the conception of the judges, 
but is usually confined to half an hour — that dog is 
ruled out. This much Burton knew. The question 
was whether the girl by her whistle and the wave of 
her handkerchief to right and left could keep the dog 


THE BOLTER 


65 


within the course. The test is, which dog will find 
the most birds in that course and handle them with 
the greatest speed and dash. 

At first the girl succeeded in handling her dog, 
though she had to ride hard to do so. Far ahead of 
the judges she kept, a slim figure against the hills. 
Now and then came the shrill of her whistle and the 
wave of her handkerchief. Then it began to be 
rumoured among the field that she had lost him. But 
not for long. On top of a hill she appeared, her right 
arm thrown up high. Judges, then the field, galloped 
toward her. The upraised hand meant her dog had 
scored — had found birds. 

Burton, spurring up his horse, kept up with the 
crowd. There, in the midst of a straw field, head up, 
tail straight out, stood the pointer. The girl had dis- 
mounted, taken the little gun out of the scabbard, 
and was advancing, slim, straight, flushed of cheek, 
toward him. 

“Flush your birds!” ordered the senior judge. 

The birds rose with a whirr; the little gun barked; 
the pointer dropped to his haunches; it was perfect 
work. 

“Go on, old man!” she ordered. 

Then she was running back to her pony, which 
Ferris was holding for her. Again Burton saw in 
her face the strain she was under. How precious 
was every moment with a wild dog like this! She 
rammed the little gun in the scabbard, sprang into 


66 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

the saddle, hardly seeming to touch the stirrups, and 
was off. 

Again Drake scored, then Count Redstone. Nearly 
an hour had flitted away. Then Burton, loitering 
among the rearmost of the field, heard rumours that 
something was wrong, and, anxiously spurring up 
his mount, came upon a body of horsemen gathered 
in a patch of woods. 

Out yonder in a cotton field, he could see the three 
judges gathered on their horses like consulting gen- 
erals on a battlefield. They had called time, the 
men explained to Burton, until Jessie Arnold could 
find her dog. A short distance from the judges 
Count Redstone was sitting on his haunches, panting, 
and beside him stood his handler, dismounted. This 
was giving Count Redstone a chance to rest, and the 
handler was taking full advantage of it. 

Some of the men, the group explained to Burton, 
were scouting for the girl, among them Ferris. They 
were riding about the fields and woods outside the 
course, looking for her dog. The rest of them had 
better stay here; the judges would not allow too 
many helpers. The girl had ridden up yonder creek 
bottom, the last they saw of her. She was going like 
mad, they said. 

But she was using her brains, they added. There 
are two kinds of bolters — those who run away for the 
sheer love of running, and those who from hilltops 
pick out the country that looks like containing birds, 


THE BOLTER 


67 


and make for that country of their own sweet will. 
Arnold’s Drake belonged to the latter class. The girl 
was looking for him in the “birdy” spots. But 
heaven only knew how far he had taken it into his 
head to go! Old Burton got out his handkerchief 
and mopped his face. Five minutes passed, then 
ten — and still Arnold’s Drake was lost, and out yon- 
der the judges waited. 

Then across the field toward the group in the 
woods came the girl. Off to the side of these woods 
were extensive fields of broom straw that lay outside 
the course. But they looked “birdy,” those fields, 
and the girl was making for them. 

As she swept past. Burton glimpsed her face. It 
was tense with anxiety, but the little mouth was set 
in a straight line. Her pony was flecked with foam; 
his eyes were wild; and Burton heard his hoarse pant- 
ing and the pounding of his hoofs. 

Careless of tree limbs, the girl swept through the 
woods. It came over Burton that, in this way, and, 
in trying to keep up with this very dog, her father 
had broken his knee. He wheeled his own horse 
about and tried to follow. But she had disappeared 
in her mad search; even the sound of her pony’s 
hoofs had died away. Burton drew up his horse, 
and looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes had 
passed, and still the judges waited. Again Burton 
mopped his face with his handkerchief. 

He had been an object of admiration among the 


68 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


men, and now they gathered about him. The faces 
of them all showed with what sympathy they were 
watching Jess Arnold’s gallant fight. Again Burton 
looked at his watch. Twenty minutes — and the judges 
still waited out yonder, and Count Redstone rested. 

“Can’t we do something?” demanded Burton. 

Not a thing, they said. Leaving out the fact that 
the judges would not permit many scouters, it wasn’t 
good for a crowd to ride over the fields. The dog 
would see them, from a distant hill, perhaps, think 
he was going right, and keep on. It was all over, 
anyway, one man ventured: Arnold’s Drake was out 
of the race. It was a pity, too. But for the bolting 
he was a great dog. They began to talk of this race 
as of something that might have been. 

Then a man cried out excitedly, “Yonder she 
comes now! She’s got him, too! That girl don’t 
give up — she don’t know how!” 

Burton saw her galloping toward them, and with 
her the wild dog. 

“Is time up?” she panted, reining in her pony. 

“Five minutes!” said Burton. 

“He was on birds!” she gasped. “But he was 
off the course. Five minutes, you say?” 

She threw herself from the saddle. A man caught 
the reins of her panting, foam-flecked pony, and she 
was down on the ground beside the dog, while the 
others gathered about her. She had made the dog 
lie down. She was stroking him. 


THE BOLTER 


69 


“You devil!” Burton heard her gasp. “You 
darling! You beauty! You wonder! Oh, I love 
you, but you don’t love me — me or Dad ! ” 

She was oblivious now of the men about her. The 
slim hand was stroking the head, the long back, 
quietly, smoothly. “Steady!” she was pleading. 
“Steady, old man. Look at me!” She had caught 
his head and raised his eyes to hers. “ Can’t you see? 
Oh, you beauty — can’t you see? See what it means ! 
Now, now — be quiet — just a minute — quiet — quiet — 
steady — steady ! ” 

The frantic panting was growing less; but still the 
wild fire blazed in the amber-brown eyes. Once he 
started to rise, but she pushed him gently back. 
Again she lifted his head, and looked at him long, 
pleadingly. 

“Can’t you see?” she said. “Can’t you see?” 

And now there came a change, visible to Burton, 
and to them all. The panting stopped altogether, 
the dog choked and swallowed. The pricked, eager 
ears fell back gently against the long thoroughbred 
head. The wildness faded out of the eyes that 
stared into the girl’s face, and in them came the light 
of love, the dawn of understanding. 

“You see now, don’t you?” she said quietly. 

She rose to her feet. He did not move, but lay 
there looking up at her humbly, wonderingly. She 
stood above him a moment and still he did not move. 

“Time’s up!” said one of the men tensely. 


70 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

She nodded to show she had heard. It was as if 
she might break the spell if she spoke. The man 
led the pony to her. With no haste, now, she got 
into the saddle. 

“Heel!” she commanded. 

The pointer rose and looked up at her. 

“Heel!” she repeated. 

When she rode out of the woods, across the sunlit 
fields toward the judges, at her pony’s heels trotted 
the pointer, obedient now, as if he had left behind 
him, in that patch of woods, his wild heritage. 

No man or woman who saw the work of Arnold’s 
Drake the rest of that morning can ever forget it. 
Fast as ever, yet he kept the course. Bold, inde- 
pendent, aggressive, yet at every shrill whistle he 
turned, and according to the wave of her handker- 
chief went to right or left. 

Ten coveys of birds, in the hour and a half that 
remained to him, he found. From terrific speed men 
saw him flash ten times into the statuesque immo- 
bility of a point. They forgot even so steady and 
painstaking a fellow as Count Redstone. It was the 
pointer who captured their imaginations. 

On Saturday night, while the crowd was at supper, 
the decision of the judges, who always stopped at Free- 
dom Hill, was telephoned in. And the decision showed 
them to be dog men, not martinets — men who can 
overlook a grievous fault in the face of a magnificent 
accomplishment and a future full of promise. 


TEE BOLTER 


71 


A veteran reporter took the message, then stood 
in the dining-room door a moment, his eyes twinkling 
at the faces turned his way. 

“ Champion,” he said, and paused a moment, 
“Champion, Arnold’s Drake.” 

But when the girl declared she must telegraph 
her father, old Burton pushed through the crowd 
about her. 

“I’ll attend to that,” he said. 

He saw the quick friendliness in her upraised eyes. 
Had he not shown faith throughout in her dog? 

Out in the hall he spoke to the men : “ Telephone 
Ferris,” he said. “He’s stopping with the post- 
master. Tell him to come at once.” 

In his own room he got out his stationery and pen 
and wrote, quickly, in a bold hand that dashed 
across the sheet. But the excitement of it must 
have told on him, for he dated the letter two days 
back, on Thursday. 

When the door opened he looked up. There was 
Ferris, his face jubilant. Behind Ferris was the girl. 
At sight of her old Burton did a funny thing. He 
put his hand over the letter he had been writing. 

“I just wanted to be sure,” she said — “Dad, you 
know.” 

“I’ll attend to that,” he said impatiently. 

After she was gone he hastily addressed the letter. 

“Close the door, Ferris,” he said. “You know the 
postmaster well, don’t you? You’ve known him for 


72 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


years. Well, tell him he won’t get into any trouble 
over this. Tell him it’s often done. Tell him if he 
does get into trouble, I’ll make it all right. Tell him 
he’ll be glad he got into it. Tell him to stamp this 
letter two days back — January 27th — and mail it 
to-night. Send a telegram signed ‘Jessie’ to old 
Arnold, saying his dog — his dog, mind you — is Na- 
tional Champion . Hurry now ! ’ ’ 

Late the next afternoon a crippled dog handler tore 
open a letter. It had come on the same train with 
his daughter and with the National Champion, who 
now lay before the fire. As his master opened the 
letter this champion looked up, and tapped the floor 
with his tail. 

Beside her father stood Jessie, amazed at what 
she saw in the letter. 


Thursday morning, January 27. 

Dear Sir: 

I have just seen your dog work out in a preliminary test. 
He’s a far worse bolter than even you had led me to believe. 
According to your representation, your daughter could 
handle him. I find her absolutely incapable of doing so. 
Under the circumstances I feel justified in cancelling our 
agreement. Yours truly, 

William Burton. 

“The old quitter!” cried Arnold, his eyes blazing. 
“God knows I’m glad to get my dog. Three thou- 
sand couldn’t get him now. But who would have 
thought ” 


THE BOLTER 


73 


And eyes still blazing with anger and joy and ex- 
citement, he told the girl at his side the bargain they 
had made, right in this room. 

For a moment she was silent, with staring eyes; 
then she cried out: 

“Dad — Dad — he wrote the letter that night — 
after Drake was made champion. I know — I saw 
him doing it. He tried to hide it . . . I know!” 

On the train that very night, in the stateroom, 
Ferris spoke to his boss. 

“I know a man, sir, who owns a dog I believe will 
win next year.” 

In the deep-set eyes came a twinkle that lit them 
up like tiny electrics. 

“Has the man a broken leg and a daughter?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Then buy the dog, Ferris.” 


IV 

OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 


I T WAS with grave misgiving that old Frank, 
Irish setter, followed little Tommy Earle out 
of the precincts of the big shaded yard and into 
the hot field of rustling corn, twice as tall as they. 
That this morning of all mornings the boy belonged 
back there in the yard he knew well enough, but all 
his efforts to keep him there had failed. He had tried 
to divert his mind. He had loitered behind. He had 
glanced back wistfully at the big white house, hoping 
in the absence of the boy’s father and mother to 
attract the attention of old Aunt Cindy the cook to 
the fact that Tommy was running away. 

But old Aunt Cindy was nowhere to be seen. 
There was no one to catch his signals of distress. 
There was no one to see Tommy enter the corn. And 
no one knew what he knew — that strangers were 
camped down there in his master’s woods. As for 
him, he had smelled them the night before after 
everybody was asleep. He bad barked a while in 
their general direction, then gone down there to in- 
vestigate. They had not seen him, for he had kept 
74 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 75 

out of sight. There had been two men and a woman 
sitting by a small fire, an old car in the background. 
He had not liked their looks. 

And that wasn’t all. Not long ago he had seen 
one of the men, half hidden in the cornfield, looking 
toward the house. The man had stood there while 
Steve Earle, the boy’s father, drove off in the car. 
He had stood there while Marian Earle, the boy’s 
mother, went off across the orchard in another 
direction with a basket of fruit for a neighbour. He 
had stood there until Frank, left alone with the boy, 
had started toward the cornfield, tail erect, eyes 
fierce. Then the man had turned hurriedly and 
entered the woods. 

But the man was still down there. So were those 
other people. Frank’s nose told him that. Therefore 
his eyes were deep with trouble and he followed close 
at the boy’s heels. Tommy’s objective he knew well 
enough. A few days before Steve Earle had brought 
them both through this very corn, into the woods, 
to the creek. The father had pointed out to the 
boy the silvery fish darting here and there in a deep- 
shaded pool. It had made a great impression. Tommy 
was going to see those fish now. That Frank knew. 

And he sympathized with the impulse, so far as 
that was concerned. Under ordinary circumstances, 
he was not averse to looking at fish himself. But now, 
with every step the boy took his anxiety increased. 
For it was beside the pool that the strangers were 


76 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


camped. And it was straight in their direction that 
little Tommy in his ignorance was headed. 

The morning sun blazed down through the thin 
obstacle of the tall corn. It flashed on the white-and- 
striped shirt and trousers and on the turn-down 
straw hat with the blue-ribbon band. In the deep- 
furrowed rows dust puffed up from under the hurry- 
ing little sandalled feet. Intent on seeing those 
darting silvery fish in that deep-shaded pool, Tommy 
did not once turn to look into the troubled eyes close 
behind him. 

Within sight of the woods Frank made his last at- 
tempt. He stopped and sat down firmly on his 
haunches. Then the boy turned, his face flushed 
under the white hat. 

“Come on, F’ank!” he said impatiently. 

A gust of dry summer wind swept across the field 
and rattled the blades of corn and tossed up the 
silvery side of the leaves in the forest. 

The boy grew angry. “Come on, F’ank!” he 
cried. 

Panting hard, saliva dripping into the dust of the 
corn row, Frank sat where he was and looked every- 
where but at the boy in the dignity of his determina- 
tion. 

“Sit there, then!” said Tommy. “I’m goin’!” 

He went; and Frank went, too; for obedience, even 
against his judgment, is the penalty a dog has to pay 
who loves a boy — and will die for him if need be. 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 77 

In contrast with the bright glare of the cornfield it 
was dark in the woods, like passing from out of doors 
into the cool, shaded living room back home. Here 
and there shafts of sunlight pierced the dense foliage 
and touched leaves and tree trunks with silver spots. 
Down the heavy-wooded slope the boy went, but 
more cautiously now. Suddenly he stopped breath- 
less, Frank beside him with pricked ears. At the 
same time the two men, both at work on the car down 
there by the pool, both burly and flushed of face, 
glanced quickly around. 

A moment they stared; then they began to talk, 
low, excitedly. The woman came around from the 
other side of the car. She was young, slim, strong; 
she was in a crimson shirtwaist and on her cheeks were 
spots of red. She, too, glanced at boy and dog, 
then joined the talk of the men. “No! No!” she 
cried. They brushed her aside; she ran quickly back 
to them; they brushed her aside again. Finally one 
of them pushed her into the car, pulled the shabby 
curtains down, and got in himself. The other man 
came forward, a smirking smile on his heavy red face. 

Close to the boy stood Frank, his challenging eyes 
fastened on that smirking face. But Tommy, look- 
ing up with that eagerness to trust common to all 
young things from children to puppies, answered 
the man’s questions in his clear boy’s voice. Many 
times before, at Tom Belcher’s store, at the Hunt 
Club, at country fairs, strangers had stopped thus to 


78 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

talk to him, had asked him who he was, where he 
lived, if his dog would bite. Many times before such 
strangers had smiled down into his upturned face. 

“We got lots of things in the car,” the man was 
saying, “apples, peaches, circus things. We been 
to a circus. Did you see the lady?” 

“I did!” said Tommy, breathless, his eyes big. 

“Well, you come along with me. The lady wants 
to show you them circus things.” 

Just a moment Tommy hesitated. He looked up 
wistfully into the smiling face and into the narrowed 
eyes that somehow frightened him. Then he glanced 
toward the car and smiled in ecstasy. That rolled- 
up tent strapped on behind was striped red-and- 
white like tents at the fair: merry-go-round tents, 
tents with shawled women who held your hand and 
told you what was going to happen. The woods be- 
came suddenly alive with romance, luring him to 
see. He hesitated no longer. He went with the 
man, one hand on his hat brim as if the wind were 
blowing. Close behind, panting, followed old Frank. 

The car flecked with spots of light looked big here 
in the woods like a strayed elephant. The other 
man, on the front seat, his hand on the wheel, glanced 
over his shoulder as they approached. In his wide- 
brimmed hat he looked like the man who stands in 
front of tents and shouts for people to come in and see. 
Half concealed by the curtains and by bundles, the 
woman, her face strangely white except for red spots, 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 79 

sat on the back seat. Valises and suitcases with 
gaudy things sticking out of them were strapped 
here and there to the car. Tommy stopped and 
stared in wonderment at this travelling splendour. 
Close beside him stood old Frank, fierce-eyed, wise, 
suffering. 

“ Get in, son,” said the man at the wheel, his voice 
gruff and husky. “We’re goin’ to take you to your 
ma. You ain’t got no business down here in the 
woods alone. Quick now — no fooling ! ” 

But Tommy drew back. 

“Is — is F’ank goin’?” 

“Sure. Let the dog in, Bill.” 

The red-faced man slammed the door on boy and 
dog and clambered heavily into the front seat. The 
lumbering car lurched and swayed along the unused 
wood road. It was stifling hot in here with the cur- 
tains down, but old Frank, wedged in between 
bundles and suitcases, was panting with more than 
heat. And Tommy, into whose face he looked with 
flattened ears and eyes solemn with devotion, was sud- 
denly pale. 

Just ahead, the big road came into sight, shining 
in the sun. The car stopped. The woman against 
whose knees boy and dog were pressed in the crowded 
space was breathing fast. The crimson, sleazy shirt- 
waist rose and fell. Her face, in spite of the red 
spots, was pasty, as if she might faint. The men 
looked up and down the road, nodded grimly at each 


80 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


other, and the car started with a jerk. The scream 
of Tommy broke the terrible silence. 

“ That ain’t the way ! That ain’t ! ” 

The red-faced man whirled around, caught the 
boy by the back of the neck and pressed the other 
hand over his mouth. And old Frank, rearing up 
in the crowded confusion, buried his shining fangs 
deep in that hand and wrist. The other man sprang 
out of the car, jerked the door open, and caught him 
by both hind legs. 

“Don’t stick him, Bill!” he gasped. “They’ll find 
his body. Let him go home!” 

Snarling, writhing, fighting, Frank was dragged 
out and hurled into the road. A savage kick sent 
him tumbling backward; the man sprang once more 
into the front seat. The car darted away, Frank after 
it, barking hoarsely in his rage and horror, his mouth 
flecked with bloody foam, the road flying dizzily 
underneath him. 

All that blazing August day he followed the car — 
followed though at the next patch of woods it stopped 
and a man jumped out with a shotgun. He was a 
hunting dog; he knew what that meant. Like a 
big red fox caught prowling about after daylight, he 
sprang into the bushes and disappeared from sight. 
After that he did not show himself again. Where he 
could, he stayed in the woods, running parallel to 
the road like a swift, silent outrider. At open places 
he lagged shrewdly behind; by short cuts through 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 81 

fields, by spurts of speed at the next patch of woods, 
he caught up again. It was an old trick and a simple 
one; he had played it often before; but never, as now, 
with such gnawing anxiety, such bewilderment and 
rage in his heart. 

Once, lumbering old rattletrap though it was, the 
car left him far behind. Then as he raced frantically 
along the dusty road under the fierce sun that beat 
down on his heavy red coat, his eyes were like a mad 
dog’s eyes. But from the top of a long hill over 
which it had disappeared he glimpsed it again in the 
distance — glimpsed it just as it turned clumsily out of 
the highway and pointed its nose toward the distant 
mountains. 

After this it was easy. A mongrel cur might have 
kept up, much less a seasoned thoroughbred. Up and 
down hill ahead of him the car swayed and wallowed 
laboriously in an unused, gully- washed road. There 
was constant shade in which to stop and pant, there 
were frequent streams in which to lie for a moment, 
half submerged, and cool his boiling blood. Noon 
passed without any halt. The sultry afternoon wore 
slowly away. Still the big setter, his silver-studded 
collar tinkling slightly like tiny shining castanets, gal- 
loped after that disreputable car as if he belonged 
to it and had been left carelessly behind. 

It never entered his head to turn back. Life was 
a simple thing to him. There were no pros and cons 
in his philosophy. Yet he watched every turn of 


82 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


that car, always on the alert, always ready to spring 
aside into the bushes if it stopped. That man had 
meant murder; to show himself meant death. He 
was a chauvinist, but he was no fool. The boy 
needed him alive, not dead. 

But the first sight of the boy was almost too much 
for him. The car had turned out of the road at last. 
It bumped a while through woods, stopped, and he 
sank down behind a bush. The sun had just set. 
Yonder through a gap in the trees rose the dome of 
a heavy -wooded mountain. Above it a vast pink 
and white evening cloud boiled motionless into the 
sky. Beyond this mountain rolled the solid blue un- 
dulations of whole ranges. For miles they had not 
passed a house. The breathless heat of a wilderness 
hung over this place. 

The men, stiff, dusty, hot, got out. The heavy 
man’s hand was bandaged. Then the woman got 
out; then the boy. A great trembling desire seized 
the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he was 
here. Every muscle quivered; he choked and 
swallowed; he looked off as if to avoid temptation. 
But one of the men pulled a shotgun out of the car 
and the dog bowed his head between his paws in a 
sort of shame. That was the symbol of his helpless- 
ness. That was what stood between his fangs and 
those men’s throats. 

He watched them strip the car of its baggage. They 
unstrapped the tent and dragged it off to the depths 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 83 


of a thicket beyond. Valises, telescopes, all the 
cheap pageantry of their trade, went the same way. 
They were staking everything on the prize that had 
walked into their hands that morning, coming like 
a little prince from that big white house that sat 
amidst its trees on the hill surrounded by broad 
fields rich with corn and tobacco and cotton. 

At last the man who had driven the car picked up 
the gun. The woman, one arm full of bundles, took 
the boy by the hand. He drew back, looking up at 
her and holding to his hat. She spoke to him low 
and huskily, her face white. Then, as he perforce 
went with her, Frank heard him crying in the woods, 
heard the convulsive catches of his voice, saw the 
twinkle, through the trees, of white socks above 
reluctant, sandalled feet. 

Eyes sullen and fierce, he rose and followed. Down 
the hill, where a creek gurgled, the man with the gun 
turned. He was hard-jawed, pale-eyed. The boy 
and woman stopped. 

“Shut up!” he said. 

The crying stopped; the convulsive sobs went on. 

“Shut up!” 

A few steps the dog rushed forward, hair risen all 
the way down his back. Then he sank down on the 
ground. For the woman had dropped the bundles 
and was on her knees before the boy, her arm about 
his heaving shoulders. Frank saw the whiteness of 
her face as she looked up at the man above her. Her 


84 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


voice rang through the woods, husky and shrill, but 
suppressed. 

“He can’t help it, Joe!” 

The crying had stopped now. But the sturdy little 
chest was still rising and falling as the boy stood look- 
ing up with quivering face at the man. The woman 
picked up her bundles, rose, and took his hand once 
more. Still holding to his hat he went with her, in 
silence now, taking two little trotting steps to one of 
hers. 

They spent the night in the woods, out of hearing 
of any chance passer-by along the road. Carefully 
hidden in the underbrush old Frank watched them. 
Only once did he leave them. Then he went to the 
car, found a big chunk of side-meat wrapped in a 
paper under the back seat, made his meal off his 
enemies, and came guardedly back, licking his chops. 
They were gone again before day. The rising sun 
found the car toiling upward into the echoing depths 
of the mountains. Just around the last bend in the 
road followed old Frank. 

Sometimes he trotted, sometimes he broke into a 
gallop. Sometimes he stopped to drink at streams 
that came slipping down green walls of rock, crossed 
the road like snakes, and dived into the foliage below. 
His tongue hung out; he was gaunt, dust-covered, 
weary-eyed. The few mountaineers he passed looked 
at him with narrow suspicion, then back up the wind- 
ing road where that curtained car had disappeared. 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 85 

With just a glance up into their faces, he galloped 
by. 

But when another car, long, black, shining, like 
the one at home, swung suddenly around the bed 
just ahead, he stopped short. The weariness left his 
eyes, the stiffness went out of his muscles, his heart 
gave a great bound. Four sportsmen, such as he 
and his master associated with, bobbed comfortably 
up and down in the capacious seats of that approach- 
ing car. Their fishing rods were strapped to the side. 
He saw the shine of the sun on their ruddy faces, the 
twinkle in their eyes as they stopped. 

“What’s up, old man?” they asked. 

Maybe he got a bit rattled. Anyway, he failed. 
He ran up the road in the direction of that other 
car, wheeled, and ran back. He jumped up on the 
step with his front paws, he looked up with plead- 
ing eyes from one face to another. 

“Those folks left him behind,” they said. 

They assured him that it was a shame to treat a 
good old scout that way, but he could catch up if 
he kept plugging. They said if the road were not 
too narrow they would turn round, give him a lift 
and his people a piece of their minds. They threw 
him something to eat, they wished him good luck, 
and left him standing in the road, looking after them 
with disconsolate eyes. 

After he had eaten the food and taken up his 
solitary pursuit, he heard in the road far below the 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HJLL 


86 

sound of their car. Even their voices floated up to 
him between the narrow walls of the echoing gorge. 

“I tell you/ 5 said one, “it was an S O S! We 
ought to have followed him. Something queer 
about that car.” 

But they were gone for all that, like the friends 
who, whether we be man or woman or dog, daily 
pass us by, willing to help if they only understood. 

It was dusk when he caught up. The car had 
reached the flattened top of the lofty range it had 
been climbing all day. From behind a bush he 
watched it turn out of the road. Like some mam- 
moth beast astray it bumped and swayed across a 
desolate field of broomstraw with borders that 
plunged abruptly off into space. In the middle of 
the field grew a black thicket of stunted pines, hud- 
dled densely together up here under the sky. On 
the side of the thicket away from the road the car 
stopped, and Frank crept into the pines and lay 
down. The men got out, then the woman, then 
the boy. 

He saw Tommy looking all about in bewilderment 
at this roof of the world on which, a lonely little 
figure, he stood close to the woman. Again the 
longing seized the dog to rush forward, to let the 
boy know he, too, was here. But there were the 
men close by; and in the car was the gun. Again 
he bowed his head between his paws; and his eyes 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 87 

in the faint glow from the light that still lingered 
in the sky were deep with loneliness and trouble. 

Suddenly the man who had driven the car turned. 
He glanced at the woman and the boy, then toward 
the road. He took his pipe out of his mouth. 

“Here, you get back in that car, kid!” he said. 

This time Tommy stood his ground sturdily, but 
his upturned face was white in the dusk, and he 
held tight to the skirt of the woman. 

“Did you hear me?” 

“He’s dead tired, Joe!” snapped the woman. 

The man took a sudden threatening step forward. 
In the thicket Frank rose quivering to his feet. 
But with a quick movement the woman had pushed 
the boy behind her. “Don’t you touch him, 
Joe!” she flashed. A moment she stood facing him, 
slim, defiant in the dusk. Then she took the boy’s 
hand and they went back to the car. 

Suddenly Frank rose on his front legs, ears thrown 
back, eyes glowing wildly. It seemed to him that 
the boy had looked straight into the bushes where 
he lay. Certainly for a moment he had pulled 
back on the woman’s hand. Then he went on with 
her and they got into the car. But Frank still 
sat on his haunches, panting and choking and pant- 
ing again. 

At last he crept along the edge of the thicket and 
lay there close to the car. He was still panting. 
That glimpse full into the boy’s face had almost 


88 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry 
for human companionship. He wanted to go to 
the car, to rear up on the side to scratch at the cur- 
tains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and 
forth before a fire they had built, moved the men. 
And against the box they had taken from the car 
leaned the gun. 

Within the car he heard the voice of the woman, 
low, confidential, assuring, and his ears flattened 
with gratitude and trust. The man wouldn’t hurt 
him, she was telling the boy. Sometimes he talked 
to everybody that way. He was an old grouch, 
that’s what he was. She whispered something. 

“To-morrow?” the boy asked eagerly. 

“Hush! Sure. That’s it — to-morrow!” 

“Did F’ank go home, Nita?” 

“Sure he went home.” 

“I saw a dog in the bushes!” 

The woman laughed. “You’re seeing things, 
old scout. What about some supper?” 

She got out of the car and went quickly to the 
fire the men had built. Without a word to them 
she gathered up something to eat and came quickly 
back. Even in the darkness Frank could see the 
light in her eyes. 

The boy must have gone to sleep soon after that. 
The moon, big, weird, solemn, rose slowly over 
yonder parallel range of mountains. The men at 
the fire talked low and mumbling between long in- 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 89 


tervals. Presently the heavy man rose, skirted 
the thicket, and stumbled off across the field toward 
the road. The smell of him polluted the air no 
more. Then the woman came quietly out of the 
car and joined the other man at the fire. 

“Where’s he gone?” she asked. 

“To get the lay of the land.” 

She sat down opposite him, her knees drawn up, 
her chin in her hand. 

“Joe?” 

“Well?” 

“The kid’s got me, Joe!” 

He said nothing and she talked on, her voice low. 
Still he said nothing. Then she went over to him, 
sat .down beside him, took his hand in hers. “Let’s 
take him home!” she pleaded, her voice rising. 
“Let’s make a clean breast of it. Let’s begin all 
over again. Let’s be straight. They’ll give us a 
chance — I know they will. They’re like the kid — 
white. I know they are. Let’s turn round right 
now. I promised him we’d take him home to- 
morrow. I couldn’t help it! Joe, Joe, I’d rather 
be dead than go on!” 

She rose when he rose, clinging to him. He threw 
her off, she ran to him, and he threw her off again, 
his face distorted in the moonlight. “I’m tired 
of this sob stuff!” he cried. “We’re in this thing 
and we’re goin’ to see it through ! ” 

“You’ll wake him!” she gasped. 


90 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Let him wake! The daddy’ll come across or 
I’ll wring the brat’s neck!” 

“Oh!” she screamed. 

She stared at him with white face, full of horror 
and fear and loathing. She turned and stumbled 
toward the car, the curtains closed upon her. Far 
in the night Frank heard her sobbing to herself. 

His eyes were green with hatred as he followed the 
car the next day. A few crumbs of bread from the 
deserted camping place, a taste of potted meat from 
a can he held fiercely between his paws while he 
licked the inside, had made his meagre breakfast. 
There were times that day when, if the men had 
looked behind, they must have seen him. There 
were times when he would not have cared if they 
had. Close around the bends, within sight some- 
times where the road straightened, he trotted or 
loped wearily along, tongue lolling out, collar loose 
on his neck. So another day wore away and mid- 
afternoon came. Then the car stopped, and from 
force of habit, as it were, he turned aside for the last 
time into the bushes. 

Suddenly his panting ceased, he raised his head, 
and pricked his ears. From the valley below had 
come the smell of human habitations mingled with 
the faint tinkle of a cowbell and the sound of a 
hammer. Eyes bright in an instant, he, watched the 
man climb stiffly out of the car ahead. The other 
and bulkier man clambered from between the cur- 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 91 


tains of the rear where he had ridden all that day. 
They talked for a while low and guardedly. They 
glanced suspiciously up and down the rough road 
they had been following, then down a shaded road 
that led pleasantly to the valley below. 

“There ain’t an inch of gas left,” said the man 
who had driven the car. “It’s the last chance for 
fifty miles.” 

“Have you looked in the can?” asked the heavy 
man, his face worried. 

“You saw me empty it last night, didn’t you?” 
sneered the other. 

He pulled a big can out of the car, then he parted 
the curtains. 

“See here, kid, you want to keep damn quiet — 
hear?” 

No sound came from within. 

“Did you hear me?” 

The voice sounded muffled in a sort of sob. 

“Yes, sir!” 

“All right. Remember! I’m cornin’ back.” 

He fastened the curtains together. He mut- 
tered directions to his uneasy companion. “You 
drive up to them bushes and wait.” He put in 
his hip pocket something that flashed brilliantly, 
even pleasantly, in the sun, he put on his coat, 
picked up the can, and started down the shaded 
road. And old Frank, fierce eyes shrewd, hair 
risen all the way down his gaunt back, rose guard- 


92 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


edly, crept through the bushes, came out in the 
road behind and followed. 

Old Frank had been a companion of men all his 
days. He had hunted with them, shared their food 
and fire, looked up with steady, open eyes into 
their faces. He had never had a human enemy 
before. But now he stalked this man as his an- 
cestors had stalked big game — muscles tense, head 
low between gaunt shoulder blades, eyes hard and 
bloodshot. When the man turned he would rush 
forward and spring at his throat. 

But the man hurried on, and looked neither to 
the right nor left, nor behind him. Thus they came 
suddenly out of a wilderness into a village that 
straggled up the sides of mountains. There were 
glimpses of white cottages clinging to abrupt hill- 
sides, or rambling steps leading to green summer 
lawns, or swings in the shade, or white-clad, romp- 
ing children — children like Tommy Earle. 

Yonder down the street glass knobs of telephone 
poles glistened in the sun. At the end of the street 
rose the white columns of a long building with a 
big, black, dust-covered car in front. Women in 
white, children with nurses, sallow mountain folk, 
were abroad in the first coolness of the afternoon. 
It was the busy season, when the heat of cities 
drives people to the fresh air of the mountains and 
a hundred such villages spring into life and laughter. 

Through this holiday crowd went the red-faced. 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 93 


dusty man. Twenty paces behind followed the 
gaunt Irish setter. People stopped in the street 
to look back at him. Children pulled on their 
nurses’ hands, thrilling to make friends with such 
a big dog, then pulled back, distrustful of the look 
in his eyes. Man, then dog, passed the drug store 
where behind plate-glass windows cool-dressed men 
and women sat at slender tables. Next to the drug 
store was a brick garage with a gasolene meter in 
front. About the entrance loitered a group of 
men watching. One was bigger than the rest and 
wore a wide-brimmed hat. 

Through this group pushed the man with the ten- 
gallon can. Close behind now followed the gaunt 
Irish setter. It happened quickly, like one of those 
mountain tragedies that brood over such places, 
remnants of feuds that hang on to the skirts of civi- 
lization. Two muffled pistol shots broke the peace 
and security of the village and brought men run- 
ning to the garage. For the man with the ten- 
gallon can had turned at last, and Frank had sprung 
straight at his throat. 

From the confusion of crowding men came the 
hoarse shout, 

“Turn me loose! Let me kill that dog! Can’t 
you see? He’s mad as hell ! ” 

“I’ve got the dog all right!” cried the big man 
in the broad-brimmed hat. “If he’s mad I’ll ’tend 
to him!” 


94 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


Plunging, barking, begging to be turned loose, 
old Prank was dragged backward across the cement 
floor. In the door of a glass-enclosed office the big 
man, holding tight to his collar, turned. 

“Here — you — Sam!” he panted. “Run to the 
hotel. Tell Mr. Earle — the gentleman that just 
came with his wife — we got a man down here and 
a red Irish setter. Quick! Catch him before he 
leaves!” 

Then they were in the office, and the door was 
shut. The big man had sunk breathless into a 
chair still holding to the dog’s collar. He was 
quiet now. But the blood that dripped slowly on 
the floor was no redder than his eyes. The door 
opened and he plunged forward. But it was a 
stranger — a young man with a star on his coat. 

“Sam got ’em, Sheriff,” he said, “they’re cornin’ 
now. Must I bring the man in here?” 

“No. Keep him out there. This fellow’s still 
seein’ red.” 

“Hit?” 

“Ear. That’s all.” 

“Well, he left his mark on that devil, all right!” 

The young man went out. Still the sheriff held 
the dog’s collar. Still through the glass windows 
the crowd stared in. But suddenly it parted and 
then Frank saw them. 

“Hold on!” panted the sheriff. “No use to tear 
the house down. They’ll be in here in a minute!” 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 


95 


The door opened, they were in the office, the 
sheriff had turned him loose. He was jumping up 
against his tall master, long ears thrown back, 
upraised eyes aglow, heart pounding against his 
lean ribs. But it was the look in his young mis- 
tress’s eyes that brought him down to the floor be- 
fore her in sudden recollection that went straight 
to his heart, that set him all atremble with choking 
eagerness. 

“Take us to him, Frank!” she gasped, her hands 
clenched tight against her breast. 

He led them — master and mistress and strange 
officers, neighbours from back home, old Squire 
Kirby, Bob Kelley, John Davis — led them out of 
the town, up the shaded road across which slanting 
sunbeams gently sifted. He led them to that car 
he had followed secretly through the days and 
watched without sleep through the nights. Only 
his master’s low-voiced command held him back 
with them. 

“Steady, Frank! Steady, old man!” 

But they must have made some noise, quiet as 
they tried to be. For before they reached the car 
the heavy man scrambled out, stared for a moment 
in stupid bewilderment, then threw both hands 
high up over his head. 

“Don’t shoot!” he pleaded hoarsely, his heavy 
face aquiver. “We ain’t done the kid no harm!” 

Then it was that Frank broke away and rushed 


96 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

at last to that curtained car. With shining eyes 
he sprang into the front, over the seat, into the 
rear. Tommy’s arms were about his neck, Tommy 
was crying over and over to the woman, all out of 
breath : 

“It’s F’ank, Nita! He didn’t go home. I saw 
him in the bushes!” 

“It’s your mother, too,” she said. “Come after 
you.” She tried to smile. “I told you it would be 
to-day — didn’t I?” She snatched him to her and 
kissed him fiercely. She opened the door. “Good- 
bye, old scout,” she whispered. Then she turned to 
Frank. “Go!” she panted and her lips trembled. 
“Go!” 

Outside the car Frank stood by, quivering with 
pride while the boy passed from the mother’s high up 
into the father’s arms. He saw the light in their 
faces, the flash of the sun on the boy’s curls, the 
smiles of the men who looked on. Then the shadow 
of terrible days and nights fell across his happiness 
and for the second time that day he saw red. For 
the woman had stepped out of the car, and the big 
sheriff had caught her by the arm. 

The dog glanced up, bewildered, into the faces about 
him. But none of them had seen. He ran to the 
woman; he took his stand beside her, looking up at 
the sheriff with fierce, pleading eyes. But the sheriff 
still held her arm, and the dog growled, partly in 
anger, partly in trouble. Then Tommy saw, too. 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 97 


He wriggled loose from his father; he came running 
to their help. 

“Let go of her!” he screamed, and caught the 
woman’s skirt with both hands, “Papa, make him 
let her go!” 

But it was his mistress who understood, who came 
to them with shining face and caught the woman by 
both hands. He knew it was all right now, even 
when the woman sank down on the car step and 
sobbed brokenly, her face buried in her hands. For 
the sheriff had stepped back, and his mistress was at 
her side, an arm about her shoulder. 

“No, Sheriff,” she said, looking up at him, and the 
sun sparkled in her eyes. 

“We won’t say anything about this, gentlemen,” 
Earle said quietly to the men. 

That night Frank lay in the crowded lobby of the 
hotel, ears pricked toward the wide-screened dining- 
room door. He had already had his supper, out in 
the rear courtyard near the kitchen where many 
dishes rattled. 

“Two porterhouse steaks — raw,” Steve Earle had 
said. 

“And a big dish of ice cream,” Marian Earle had 
added with a smile, for old Frank was an epicure in 
his way. 

And now the sheriff was telling the crowd about 
him. 

“He followed that car for two hundred miles. That 


98 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

was nothin’ — been huntin’ all his life. But he kept 
out of sight— that’s the thing! They never saw him, 
and he never left them. That’s what put us on the 
trail. That’s the reason the boy’s eatin’ supper with 
his father and mother in there instead of bein’ out in 
the woods with them brutes.” 

He puffed at his cigar. 

“Some men fishing in the mountains passed him. 
He tried to flag ’em. Yes, sir — that’s what he tried 
to do. But they didn’t catch on. Might have, but 
didn’t. Next day they read in the papers about a 
boy and Irish setter being lost. Then they caught 
on and telephoned Mr. Earle.” 

“The woman that came in with the mother and 
went upstairs with her,” asked a man, “who’s 
she?” 

The big sheriff took the cigar out of his mouth 
and looked at the questioner with narrow, disap- 
proving eyes. 

“She didn’t have a thing to do with it, sir!” he 
declared. 

From the dining room came the sound of chairs 
pushed back, and Frank rose to his feet. He met 
them at the door, he stood beside the boy while the 
people gathered around, he went upstairs with them, 
the boy holding tight to his heavy red mane. 

“That old Joe!” Tommy was saying breathlessly, 
as they went down the carpeted hall. “He can’t get 
us any more. The sheriff he locked him up in a jail. 


OLD FRANK SEES IT THROUGH 99 


He can’t get Nita, either. Mama’s goin’ to take care 
of her. Mama says so!” 

He was still talking, his eyes big, when they went 
into a brightly lighted room where a little bed set be- 
side a big one. He was still talking while his mother 
undressed him. Then before he got into bed a 
spasm of virtuous reaction seized him. He and 
F’ank were never going to leave the yard any more, 
he declared. They never were going to get in any 
more automobiles with people! 

“No,” smiled Earle from his great height down at 
the little figure in borrowed pyjamas, “I guess you’re 
cured, old man!” 

The rug beside Tommy’s bed was very soft, and 
Frank was very tired. But sometime in the silent 
darkness of that night he barked hoarsely in the 
agony of a dream. For they were on top of a moun- 
tain, and a weird moon had risen, and a woman had 
screamed. 


V 


AN ACT OF GOD 

HERE must have been something prophetic 



in Mac’s fear of thunder when he was a puppy. 


JL For, though all puppies are afraid of it, and 
most grown dogs for that matter, still, Mac’s fear, 
according to Tom Jennings, his master, was more 
than that of the ordinary dog. That is, until the 
blow came. After that it was different with Mac. 

Maybe he thought, having smitten him once, that 
lightning would smite him no more. Maybe some 
change had taken place in his nature which we 
humans cannot analyze or understand. Let this be 
as it may, the fact is that Mac, after his second year, 
feared thunder no more. 

In law a stroke of lightning is known as an Act of 
God. If such is the case, it seems strange that this 
stroke should have fallen on Sunday night and in 
a God-fearing and God-serving household. As a 
matter of fact, Tom Jennings, his wife and three 
children had just driven home from church at Breton 
Junction and Tom, assisted by Frank, his boy of 
sixteen, had put up the horses. Then, as the cloud 


100 


AN ACT OF GOD 101 

was an unusually threatening one, they all gathered 
in the parlour. 

It was the ordinary parlour of country people who 
are self-respecting but neither well-to-do nor edu- 
cated. There was a fancy organ, a flowered carpet; 
there were gaudy vases and solemn-looking enlarged 
crayon portraits. Near a stiffly curtained window 
was a sort of family altar — a table on which lay a 
family Bible. This Bible, a ponderous embossed 
volume with brass guards and clasps, reposed on a 
blue-velvet table cover that almost reached the 
floor. On the cover was worked a cross and a crown 
with the legend: “He Must Bear a Cross Who Would 
Wear a Crown.” 

When, the storm having burst on this household, 
Mac scratched at the door, Tom Jennings himself, a 
tall, raw-boned, sunburnt man, rose and let him in 
with some good-humoured remark. Mac was a 
young setter, with white, silken, curly coat and 
black, silken, curly ears. He looked self-consciously 
into the faces of the family, who were smiling at his 
fears; then, with a queer expression on his face, as if 
he, too, knew it was funny, he went to the family 
altar, pushed aside the embossed velvet cover, and 
lay down under the table. The children laughed, 
Tom Jennings and Frank, a lanky, handsome, serious- 
faced lad smiled. Mac always did this in a thunder- 
storm. 

Just before the blow came, they heard him, as if he 


102 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


were still reflecting humorously upon his fears, tap 
the floor with his tail. Immediately there was the 
shiver of broken glass, a crash, a child’s suppressed 
scream, and for a moment, as the lamp went out, 
blackness. But only for a moment; for next, above 
the shining brass trimmings of the Bible, there glowed 
for several vivid seconds blue-and-white flames like a 
halo. 

There was no very clear recollection of what hap- 
pened afterward. Having assured himself that wife 
and children were safe, Tom Jennings, followed by 
the boy Frank, ran out into the yard by the side door 
which they left open, and looked at the roof of the 
house. If any fire had started it had been drowned 
at once by deluges of rain. When father and son 
returned, Mrs. Jennings had lit another lamp. Here 
they all were, with white faces. Only Mac was 
gone. 

For the better part of three days they searched for 
him, in the attic, in the cellar, in the barns and out- 
houses, in the woods near by. On the afternoon 
of the third day, Jennings stooped down and peered 
underneath the corn crib. It was set low to the 
ground, and two sides were boarded up. On the 
unboarded side weeds had grown. It was quite dark 
underneath. 

At first he could not be sure what that dim sug- 
gestion of white he made out could be. Then he 
pushed aside the weeds and peered more closely, his 


AN ACT OF GOD 


103 


eyes the while growing more accustomed to the 
dark. Finally he straightened up and called loudly: 

“Here he is, folks!” 

They all came running, Mrs. Jennings leaving her 
supper to burn if need be, Frank dropping his ax at 
the woodpile. When they reached him, Tom Jennings 
was stooping down and pleading: 

“Come, Mac! Come, old man! We are all here.” 

But the white figure did not stir. 

At last Frank wormed his long, adolescent body 
underneath the sleepers of the crib, caught hold of 
the front paws, and pulled the setter gently forth. 
They examined him all over, but at first they could 
find no sign of injury. It was Frank who saw and 
understood. Frank had always had a way of know- 
ing what was the matter with animals. 

“He’s blind,” said the youth. 

Some of the neighbours, when they heard, said 
Jennings ought to put him out of his misery. But 
no such thought ever entered the head of any member 
of the Jennings family. They built him a kennel 
underneath the bedroom window. They taught him 
where to find his plate of food on the kitchen steps. 
Soon he learned to find his way about the yard. 

At first he ran into things — into the corner of the 
house, into the woodpile, or into the chicken coops. 
He never whimpered when he did so, but looked 
humbled and ashamed. At last he located each 
object, calculated respective distances, and before 


104 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

the summer was over he avoided obstacles as if he 
had had eyes. 

You would not have known he was blind but for 
the fact that when he drew near the steps or near a 
door — he learned to open screen doors with his 
paws — he would raise his front foot, and feel about 
like a blind man with a stick. 

One day at dinner Jennings spoke to his family. 
“I don’t want any of you children ever to leave 
anything about the yard that he can stumble over. 
Mother, whenever you move a chicken coop, call 
him and show him where it is, hear?” 

They all agreed. 

Then Mac began to follow his master to the field 
and to Tom Belcher’s store up the road. Neigh- 
bours grinned and said they had often heard of a 
blind man led by a dog, but never before of a blind 
dog led by a man. They never said this, though, 
in Tom Jennings’s presence. 

As summer waned and hunting season approached, 
Tom Jennings, a great hunter, bought a pointer to 
take the place of Mac in the field, and in order that 
there might be no jealousy and no quarrelling, he 
bought a female. 

It was hard to have to leave Mac at home on the 
first day of the winter’s hunting. Though Tom had 
tried to keep the matter of his going a secret, the 
blind dog had sensed the preparations. He had 
smelled the oiling of boots. He had heard the 


AN ACT OF GOD 


105 


click of shells dropped into hunting-coat pockets. 
And at the end, the frantic barkings of the pointer, 
whom Tom had tried in vain to keep silent, told 
him as plainly as a shout. Mac tried to follow 
and they had to chain him up. 

In the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Jennings 
turned him loose. He stayed close to her skirts 
for a while, following her in and out of the kitchen 
and about the yard. But as the time drew near 
for the return of the hunters, he began to sniff the 
air in every direction, his nose held high. 

At last he smelled them coming across the fields 
and made his way eagerly through the yard and 
toward them. And now it was, as he saw the blind 
dog coming, that a happy thought struck Tom Jen- 
nings. Instead of coming to the house he waited 
at the edge of the yard ; and when Mac reached him, 
he took out of his hunting coat a quail and handed 
it to the dog. 

“Take it to the missus,” he said. 

Straight to the kitchen wing and up the steps 
the dog went, happy and proud. Mrs. Jennings 
opened the door, face beaming. The children all 
ran out to see. And though it consumed time Tom 
remained where he was and handed the blind dog 
bird after bird. After that, this procedure came to 
be a regular part of Tom Jennings’s hunts. 

Soon Mac learned to rear gently up on the kitchen 
table and place the birds on the top. Each bird 


106 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

he placed near the preceding one, rooting them gently 
with his nose into a conical pile. “Mac’s pile” 
it came to be called by the children, returning from 
school and hurrying into the kitchen. And while 
they talked to him and bragged about what a nice 
regular pile he had made, he would stand with 
wagging tail, his sightless eyes raised to their faces 
as if he saw. 

Another summer passed, a summer of other 
thunderstorms, of which he was afraid no more. 
Another bird season rolled around. And then, one 
day, he begged so hard with his unseeing eyes that 
Tom let him go. After that Tom always let him go. 
For a wonderful thing had happened. Blind Mac 
was no longer useless! He could hunt birds! 

First he seemed to be backstanding Nell, the 
pointer; that is, when she set, he advanced slightly 
in front of Tom and set, too. But since he could 
not see, it was plain that it was the birds themselves 
he was setting and not Nell. Then, a little later 
in the same day, and while Nell was nowhere in 
sight, he suddenly trotted ahead and came to a 
beautiful stand. All excited, Tom advanced, and 
a covey of birds rose. The gun barked twice and 
two birds tumbled. “Fetch, Mac!” cried Tom. 
And straight to the dead birds the unerring nose 
took him, and he retrieved them both, trembling 
with joy. 

From this time he was an object of charity no 


AN ACT OF GOD 


107 


more. Had Tom Jennings not been a man of tender 
heart, but only a hunter out after meat, he still 
would have taken Mac along. Just as in people 
when one sense is destroyed others grow more than 
normally keen, so with Mac. Never, declared Tom, 
could a dog smell birds so far; never did bird dog have 
a nose that told him so exactly where they were. 

Fortunately, the route over which Tom hunted 
lay in extensive river bottoms, cultivated in corn. 
There were few fences and Mac soon learned where 
they were. There were no woods, and only an 
occasional thicket that Mac could circle with a 
fair degree of safety. The pointer did all the wide 
ranging. 

Now and then Mac fell into a ditch or creek. It 
was always pitiful to Tom Jennings to see this. 
But each time the blind dog found his way out and 
went on undaunted, head high, tail wagging as if 
with a perpetual and inward joy. 

“I’ve seen some blind folks,” said Tom once to 
his wife, “that looked happier than folks with eyes. 
Mac looks happier to me than dogs that can see. 
It’s funny.” 

So the years passed, and blind Mac came to be a 
familiar figure, and the children grew, and Tom Jen- 
nings worked hard on his farm to give them an 
education. 

First Frank, the lad, outgrew the country schools, 
just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hard- 


108 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


working, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the 
girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade 
in the country school. And Tom Jennings and 
Martha Jennings his wife determined that each of 
them should have a college education. So Tom 
worked very hard and Martha saved very closely. 
And the fall day came when Frank left home to go 
to college in Greenville; then another day, the fall 
following, when the girls left, also. Thus Martha 
and Tom and Mac were left alone on the farm. 

“You know,” said Tom once (he was a simple, 
religious man), “I sometimes think it’s a strange 
thing, Mother, that that poor dog should have been 
struck while he was takin’ shelter under the Word of 
God. I know he ain’t nothin’ but a dog, but I reckon 
God made him. I don’t see why God struck him.” 

“Maybe there was purpose in it, Tom,” said his 
wife. 

Then hard luck came to Tom Jennings just at 
the time when the bills for the children’s second 
matriculation were due. First, the river rose and 
drowned some of his cattle and ruined a good deal 
of corn that had not been gathered. He worked 
hard, even desperately, to save what he could and 
not let the children know. Then Tom himself was 
taken with a queer feeling in the chest, a feeling of 
tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. 
Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a 
doctor in Greenville before he consented to do so. 


AN ACT OF GOD 


109 


The doctor listened with a stethoscope placed on 
the farmer’s chest. “Sit down, Jennings,” he said 
at last. “Jennings, your heart leaks. You’ve 
overstrained it. You must never do any more hard 
manual work.” 

“But, Doctor ” Tom began. 

“No buts about it. You are too good a man to 
drop off. You must go slow. You mustn’t even 
walk fast. You must never run, and you must not 
lift heavy weights. Why don’t you sell your farm 
and move to town?” 

“But the children, Doctor. I’m trying to give 
’em a better chance than I had or their mother.” 

“That’s all right, Jennings. But we have to trim 
our sails to meet life as it is. Your heart leaks, 
man! You’ve done what you could for your chil- 
dren. They’ll just have to shift for themselves.” 

Tom Jennings drove slowly home. Martha, not 
knowing the purpose of his visit to town that day, 
had gone to see Mrs. Taylor, a neighbour. Even 
Mac was not in the yard to welcome him. He put 
up his horse, then sat down on the back steps to do 
the hardest thinking he had ever done. 

At first it seemed to him like providence that just 
recently Tom Belcher had offered to buy the farm. 
In fact, he was calling him up every day about it. 
He could sell it to-morrow and then he could move 
to Greenville. The children were paying part of 
their expenses. But without his help, two of them 


110 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

at least would have to leave college. What was 
more, they would have to go to work to help him now. 
The interest from what he could get for the farm 
would not keep him going — and farming was the 
only thing he knew how to do. 

But why shouldn’t they help him? He had al- 
ready done for them more than any neighbour had 
done for his children. True, his greatest ambition 
would be unrealized. But, as the doctor said, you 
had to trim your sails in this life. Why should he 
carry on a fight when he had been stricken? God 
did not expect a crippled man to run a race. 

Also, he was frightened for his life. He carried 
within his body an enemy that might strike him 
down at any moment. Then, rather pleasantly, he 
forecast his life in town. He had fought hard, and 
now he could lay his armour down, and no one would 
think any the less of him. 

And so he sat pondering, thinking first of his 
children, for whom he had had such high ambitions, 
then of himself, who would like to live his allotted 
span, when across the pasture he saw blind Mac com- 
ing. It was a hot September afternoon, and he had 
evidently been to the creek to cool off and to get away 
from flies. He came steadily along, and though no- 
body was near his tail was gently wagging. 

The rear lot gate had been left open so the cattle 
could go to pasture, and the dog came through the 
gate and across the barn lot. This brought him to 


AN ACT OF GOD 


111 


the fence that separated the lot from the yard, and 
before this fence he stopped and felt about with his 
foot, tail still wagging. Tom Jennings did not speak 
but watched him with queer emotions. 

Having located the fence the blind dog backed 
off, looked up as if trying to see, started to spring, 
hesitated, started again, and finally leaped. His 
front paws hooked over the top plank, and he pulled 
himself up, remained balanced another moment, then 
jumped into the yard. It was as neatly done as if 
he were not blind. Tail still wagging, he came 
across the yard. 

But Martha had forgotten at last: in the middle 
of the yard was a chicken coop she had recently 
moved there. Tom started to call out a warning, 
then for some queer reason did not. Over the un- 
expected obstacle the dog stumbled and came near 
falling. He let out no cry. He simply went to the 
coop, felt it, as if to locate it for the future, then 
came on toward the house. His head was bowed, 
though, as if with that shame he seemed always to 
feel when because of his affliction he happened to 
have an accident. But his tail was still wagging. 

“Mac!” It broke from the man. 

The blind dog raised his head and whiffed the 
air. Then he located his master and came toward 
him. He laid his head on Tom Jennings’s knee, and 
Tom Jennings laid his big hard hand on the blind 
dog’s head. 


112 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

“God struck you!” he said hoarsely, “an’ you 
never give up. God put out yo’ eyes, and still 
you do your work. An* you’re only a dumb brute, 
an’ I was made in the image of God!” 

The rural telephone in the hall suddenly gave 
his ring, and he rose and went into the house. 

“Yes — I’ve decided, Tom,” he said. “I ain’t 
goin’ to sell the farm.” 

After that there came, perforce, a change in Jen- 
nings’s method of farming. Years ago Frank had 
besought him to diversify his crops, to study his 
soil, to take advantage of the information the agri- 
cultural college and the Government were so glad 
to send. 

But to the older Jennings thinking had always 
been harder than physical toil. Brought up right 
after the Civil War in a section left poverty-stricken, 
he could just read and write — that was all; for 
when he was twelve his service between the plough 
handles had begun, and there he had served ever 
since. 

Now, from necessity, he began to think and plan. 
He asked the agricultural college for information, 
and they sent not only pamphlets but a representa- 
tive from an experiment station to consult with him 
and advise him. He sold a bit of land and bought 
farm machinery. He built a tenant house and 
installed help. And all the time Frank (who did 
not know of the leaking heart) also advised him by 


AN ACT OF GOD 


113 


letters, and when he came home in the summer, 
helped wonderfully — both by hard work and by 
mental initiative. 

No great prosperity followed. But Tom Jennings 
did a shade better than he had done before, and the 
children stayed at college. Not even Martha knew 
the extent of what the doctor had told him that day. 
Only to Mac did he talk freely. 

“When yo’ eyes was put out, ol’ codger, you 
whetted yo’ nose,” he would say; “and when my 
muscles lost their engine power I whetted my o F 
rusty brain.” 

His children all did well at college. Frank finished 
an academic course (Tom and Martha saw him grad- 
uate), then went off to a medical college. Mary, the 
older girl, was studying library work; the younger girl 
had come to no conclusion yet. The three of them 
came home in summer for at least part of the season, 
and always came at Christmas. They brought 
with them a different atmosphere — the atmosphere 
of a wider world. But the girls helped the mother 
in the kitchen and Frank advised with the father 
about the farm. There was no feeling of shame on 
one side, or of apology on the other. It was the 
kind of thing that has happened on thousands of 
American farms. 

Sometimes at night Tom spoke of his children to 
Martha: “They are goin’ to pass us by, Mother. 
They are goin’ to amount to more than we have.” 


114 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

And then he would go to the window and raise 
the sash. 

“Old man?” he would say. 

And from the kennel would come a tap-tap that 
told he was heard. 

And Tom continued to hunt with Mac, alone now, 
for Nell had died of pneumonia. It was a good 
combination, the man with the damaged heart and 
the dog with the sightless eyes. Tom had to go 
slow; so did Mac. 

Gradually Tom worked out a series of signals 
which the dog understood. If there were a ditch 
ahead Tom would blow once very sharp on his 
whistle; if the dog was to turn to the right, he would 
blow twice, to the left, three times. Sometimes, of 
course, the signals got crossed, and Mac tumbled 
into a ditch or ran into a tree. Then there would be 
a choke in Tom’s throat. But these things didn’t 
happen often. 

It got to be a familiar sight in the community. 
Men from the Northern Hunt Club, men who at- 
tended the field trials on the Earle plantation, came 
to see the blind dog hunt. Never was such a nose, 
sportsmen said; never such intelligence and sagacity. 

“Shake hands with the gentlemen, Mac,” the 
proud master would say. “They speak well of you.” 

And the setter would go from one to the other and 
raise his paw, his head held high after the manner 
of the blind. 


AN ACT OF GOD 


115 


There was never a bright fire in the winter that 
Mac did not share; never a home-coming of the 
children that he, as well as Tom, was not at the 
station to meet them; never a choice bit on the table 
after Thanksgiving and Christmas but that a por- 
tion of it was laid aside for his plate. 

And so his days and years passed and Mac grew 
old — not feeble, but a bit slow and a little doting, 
as old setters become. He would lay his head on 
Tom’s knee and, unless Tom moved or pushed him 
away, keep it there for hours. The same was true 
of Martha; sometimes when she was churning he 
would stay until the butter came. It was as if he 
knew he didn’t have very much longer to abide. 

Then Frank Jennings came home, a doctor, with 
his degree. That was in the fall, just before bird 
season. Because of the deficiencies of his early 
education he had had to spend the summer making 
up certain courses in biology. 

He was now a fine, tall, grave young fellow of 
twenty-eight; even handsome and distinguished. 
His ambition, he told his father, was to be a surgeon 
in children’s deformities. To this end he hoped to 
get an appointment as assistant to a certain sur- 
geon, the most famous children’s surgeon in the 
world. 

Frank was a quiet fellow; “hoped” was the word 
he used, but the father knew it was more than hope 
— it was ardent desire. He thought maybe he had 


116 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

attracted some attention, Frank said, and that his 
work had reached the ears of the surgeon. If he 
could get the appointment he felt that his future 
was secure. 

“What do you want to be a child’s surgeon for?” 
asked the father. “To make money?” 

Frank looked at him quietly and shook his head, 
and that was all they said. 

He left soon after that. Tom drove him to the 
station, the blind dog sitting in the foot of the 
buggy. 

“Don’t you and Mother let your hopes get too 
high,” warned the young man. “There’ll be a 
hundred applicants besides myself. I’ll telegraph 
the result.” 

A few days afterward bird season opened and 
Tom Jennings and Mac set off after dinner. There 
had been three or four days of heavy rains but now 
the weather had cleared. It was a silent, gorgeous 
afternoon, high colours everywhere, gold in the 
sky and in the frosty air. 

As he walked along Tom was thinking of his 
boy and of his girls; for if Mac was growing a bit 
doting, so, perhaps, was he. Before him old Mac, 
head high, circled slowly, with ever- wagging tail. 
Suddenly, not very far from the river, he stopped, 
and his tail stiffened. 

“Cornin’, ol’ boy,” said Tom. 

The birds rose and the gun barked twice. One 


AN ACT OF GOD 


117 


bird tumbled dead. The other, only winged, re- 
covered itself and, fluttering across the field, came 
down near the bank of the river. Mac brought the 
dead bird, and Tom Jennings, stooping first to pat 
his head, dropped it in his pocket. Then they went 
on after the wounded one, which had come down near 
the river. Even now Tom was thinking in a moon- 
ing sort of way of his children. 

The river made a sharp curve inward near the 
point where the bird had gone down. Then, form- 
ing the remainder of a letter S, it swept out again and 
around a curve. Below this curve it tumbled over 
extensive and dangerous shoals of rock. The rains 
had swollen it. And now the roar from these shoals 
filled the air. 

It was this roar, together with a chance feather 
that had got into the whistle, that drowned out 
the frantic signal Tom Jennings tried to give. For 
ahead of him a terrible thing was about to happen. 
The wounded bird, frightened at the approach of 
the dog, rose, fluttered along the ground toward the 
river, and stopped near the shore. And old Mac, 
his nose telling him exactly what had occurred, was 
following with wagging tail and pricked ears — fol- 
lowing toward that sharp inward curve of the river, 
where the banks had caved in and were very steep, 
and where the current below made a sudden swerve, 
then swept outward again. 

Again, after shaking it, Tom tried to blow his 


118 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

whistle; but the feather had not been dislodged and 
the roar drowned out the muffled sound. 

“Mac!” he yelled. “Mac! Come in!” 

But the old fellow must not have heard. For 
Tom, hurrying along, his face crimson, saw the bird 
rise once more and flutter over the brink — and then, 
over the same brink, went Mac. 

At first, when the man reached the river, he gave 
a gasp of relief. Mac was swimming smoothly 
toward the bird which had floated into an eddy. 
Maybe he would recover it there, and would not get 
caught in the current. 

Only for a moment, though, did the hope last. 
The bird began to float more and more swiftly, and 
old Mac to swim more swiftly. Then the current 
caught them, swept them far out and, with ever- 
increasing speed, around the curve. 

Tom Jennings’s heart must have improved during 
these years of comparative rest. Certainly he for- 
got that he had one now. By cutting across the 
bottoms he could reach the next inward bulge of 
the river, where it tumbled over the shoals. Even 
as he ran, in the hope that someone would hear, he 
shouted : 

“Help! Help here! Help!” 

But the roar of the shoals filled the air, and the 
lofty, richly foliaged trees rose above him as in 
scorn. Out of breath, he reached the rocks and 
looked out over the foaming and tumbling waters. 


AN ACT OF GOD 


119 


Then he made Mac out, way out there. He was 
trying to crawl up on a rock, like a white seal, and 
in his mouth he held something. 

But only his paws caught hold. Then he slipped. 
Then he was lost from sight, and appeared again, 
and was lost again. And Tom knew — he was 
being beaten to death against those rocks. 

Below the shoals was a deep pool, with eddies; 
and here at last Tom, standing on the shore, saw 
him right himself and come swimming slowly, his 
head almost submerged, toward the shore. 

“Mac!” cried the man. “Here I am! Here 
I am, Mac!” 

He came on, and at last, Tom, lying flat on a rock 
and reaching down, caught first the back of the neck, 
then the paws, and pulled him out. As he did so 
old Mac gave a little cry and, once out, staggered, 
fell on his side. 

Then Tom saw that in his mouth he held the 
bird and that it was the last bird he would ever 
retrieve; for it was his own blood, not the bird’s, 
that oozed from his mouth. 

He was sitting with the dog’s head in his lap when 
the boy who worked around the railroad station 
at Breton Junction found him. 

“Got a telegram for you,” he cried. “I went by 
the house an’ there wasn’t anybody at home. I 
heard you shoot just now and come to find you. Is 
the dog hurt much?” 


120 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Run to the house,” cried Tom. “Tell one of 
them men to fetch a wagon quick. Tell him to put 
a mattress and spring on it. Quick, son — quick. 
Tell ’em they can drive across the fields. Bring 
’em yourself.” 

The lad’s face went white. He turned and 
began to run. The wagon came in a short time. 
Old Mac was lifted and placed on the mattress. By 
the easiest route they could pick they drove him 
home. They sent in haste to Breton Junction for a 
doctor — not a dog doctor but a people’s doctor. 
But one of the rocks against which he had been 
hurled had driven a rib into old Mac’s side. And 
at eleven o’clock that night, almost at the hour 
when the hand of God had smitten him, and in the 
parlour itself, blind Mac, at a call of his name by 
his master, tapped the floor with his tail for the last 
time. 

It was an hour later that Martha discovered the 
telegram in the pocket of her husband’s hunting 
coat, which he had thrown over a chair; and there 
in the presence of the body they opened it and read: 


Got the appointment, 
old Mac. 


Love to you and Mother and 
(signed) Frank. 


It was Tom Jennings who had the stone put up, 
where it stands now at the head of the grave, in the 
edge of the garden. It was Tom who had the words 


AN ACT OF GOD 


121 


put on — with the help of a sympathetic carver who 
knew old Mac’s story as nearly everybody in the 
country knew it. 

TO THE MEMORY OF MAC 
A SETTER DOG 

WHO, BLIND FROM AN EARLY AGE, 

YET DID HIS WORK IN THE WORLD 
FAITHFULLY AND CHEERFULLY 
THE WORLD IS BETTER BECAUSE HE LIVED. 


VI 


COMET 


O PUPPY ever came into the world under 



more favourable auspices than Comet. He 


was descended from a famous line of point- 


ers. Both his father and mother were champions. 
Before he opened his eyes and while he was crawl- 
ing about over his brothers and sisters, blind as 
puppies are at birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant’s 
kennel master, picked him out. 

“I believe that’s the best ’un in the bunch,” he 
said. 

On the day the puppies opened their eyes and first 
gazed with wonder at this world into which they had 
been cast, Jim stooped down and snapped his fingers. 
There was a general scampering back to the protec- 
tion of the mother by all but one. That was Comet. 
Even then he toddled toward the smiling man, in a 
groggy way, wagging his miniature tail. 

At the age of one month he pointed a butterfly 
that lit in the kennel yard. 

“Come here, Janie,” yelled the delighted Thomp- 
son who saw it. “Pointed — the damn little cuss!” 


122 


COMET 123 

When Jim started taking the growing pups out 
of the yard and into the fields to the side of Devant’s 
great Southern winter home, Oak Hill, it was Comet 
who strayed farthest from the man’s protecting 
care. While at sight of a tree stump or a cow or 
some other monstrous object his brothers and 
sisters would scamper back to the man, Comet 
would venture toward it, provided it were not too 
far, to see what it was. If a cow he would bark, 
anxious little yelps, to show how brave he was. 
Then he would turn and run back — but not until 
he had first barked. 

Over and over Jim, speaking of him to his wife — 
they looked after Oak Hill in the summer — would 
say with conviction: 

“He’s goin’ to make a great dog!” 

It looked as if Jim’s prophecy would be fulfilled. 
Comet grew to be handsomer than his brothers and 
sisters. When Jim taught them to follow when he 
said “Heel!” to drop when he said “Drop!” and to 
stand stock still when he said “Ho!” Comet learned 
more quickly than the others. In everything he 
was favoured, even in temperament. Now and 
then he quarrelled with his brothers, who grew jeal- 
ous of him, and sometimes the quarrel ended in a 
fight. But the fight over, he never sulked even if 
he were beaten, but was a loving brother two minutes 
afterward. 

His height he gained quickly, like tall bean- 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


124 

pole boys, and though big, his bones were shapely, 
and the muscles began to stand out on his lank, 
handsome body. At six months he was a stripling 
youth, two thirds pup, one third grown dog. Though 
he still romped with the others, it was plain to the 
practised eye that he was different. Sometimes he 
lay in the shade a long time and thoughtfully 
gazed into the distance, dreaming as serious-minded 
youths dream the world over. But all Comet’s 
dreams were centred in fields of broomstraw where 
birds lay hid and in the thrillings his nose told him 
there. 

At six months he set his first covey of quail, and 
though he was trembling with the excited joy of 
one who knows he has found his life’s work, still 
he remained staunch several minutes. And though 
when the birds flushed he chased them, he came 
quickly and obediently back at Jim’s command. 

Everything — size, contour, nose, muscle, intel- 
ligence, spirit — pointed to a great dog. Yes — Comet 
was one of the favoured of the gods. 

One day after the leaves had turned red and 
brown and the mornings grown chilly and pungent, 
a crowd of people, strangers to Comet, came to the 
big house at Oak Hill. With them were auto- 
mobiles, trunks, horses. All this was tremendously 
exciting, and with noses pressed against the chicken 
wire of their yard Comet and his brothers and sisters 
watched these goings-on. 


COMET 


125 

Then out of the house with Thompson came a 
big man in tweeds, and the two walked straight to 
the curious young dogs who were watching them 
with shining eyes and wagging tails. 

“Well, Thompson,” said the big man, “which is 
the future champion you’ve been writing me about?” 

“Pick him out yourself, sir,” said Thompson. 

They talked a long time, planning the future of 
Comet. His yard training was over — Thompson was 
only yard trainer — and he must be sent to a man 
experienced in training and handling for field trials. 
His grade-school days were past. He must go off 
to college. He must be prepared for the thrilling 
life of the field-trial dog. 

“Larsen’s the man to bring him out,” said the 
big man in tweeds, who was George Devant him- 
self. “I saw his dogs work in the Canadian Der- 
bies. I like his methods.” 

Thompson spoke hesitatingly, as if he disliked 
to bring the matter up. 

“Mr. Devant — you remember, sir, a long time 
ago Larsen sued us for old Ben, saying the dog was 
his by rights?” 

“Yes, Thompson, I remember — now you speak 
of it.” 

“Well, you remember the court decided against 
him, which was the only thing it could do, for 
Larsen didn’t have any more right to that dog than 
the Sultan of Turkey. But, Mr. Devant, I was 


126 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

there. I saw Larsen’s face, sir, when the case went 
against him.” 

Devant looked keenly at Thompson. 

“Another thing, Mr. Devant,” Thompson went 
on, still hesitatingly. “Larsen had a chance to 
get hold of this breed of pointers. He lost out 
because he dickered too long and acted cheesy. 
Now they’ve turned out to be famous. Some men 
never forget a thing like that, sir. Larsen’s been 
talking these pointers down ever since. At least, 
that’s what folks tell me. He’s staked his repu- 
tation on his own breed of dogs. Calls ’em the 
Larsen strain.” 

“Go on,” said Devant. 

“I know Larsen’s a good trainer. But it’ll mean 
a long trip for the young dog. It’ll be hard to keep 
in touch with him, too. Now there’s an old trainer 
lives near here, old Wade Swygert. Used to train 
dogs in England. He’s been out of the game a long 
time — rheumatism. He wants to get back in. 
He’s all right now. I know he never made a big 
name, but there never was a straighter man than 
him. He’s had bad luck ” 

Devant smiled. “Thompson, I admire your 
loyalty to your friends, but I don’t think much of 
your judgment. We’ll turn some of the other pup- 
pies over to Swygert if he wants them, but Comet 
must have the best. I’ll write Larsen to-night. 
To-morrow, crate Comet and send him off.” 


COMET 


127 


Just as no dog ever came into the world under 
more favourable auspices, so no dog ever had a 
bigger “send-off” than Comet. Even the ladies in 
the house came out to exclaim over him, and Marian 
Devant, pretty, eighteen, and a sportswoman, 
stooped down, caught his head between her hands, 
looked into his fine eyes, and wished him “Good 
luck, old man.” In the living room men laughingly 
drank toasts to his future, and from the high-col- 
umned front porch Marian Devant waved him good- 
bye as he was driven off to the station, a bewildered 
young dog in a padded crate. 

Two days and two nights he travelled. At noon 
of the third, at a dreary railroad station in a vast 
prairie country, he was lifted, crate and all, off the 
train. A man, tall, lean, pale-eyed, came down the 
platform toward him. 

“Some beauty here, Mr. Larsen,” said the station 
agent. 

“Yes,” drawled Larsen in a meditative, sancti- 
monious voice. “Pretty to the eye, but he looks 
scared — er — timid.” 

“Of course he’s scared!” protested the agent. 
“So would you be if I was to put you in some kind 
of whale of a balloon and ship you off to Mars.” 

The station agent poked his hand through the 
slats and stroked the young dog’s head. Comet 
was grateful, for everything was strange. He had 
not whined or complained on the trip — but his 


FRANK OF FREEDOM BILL 


128 

heart had pounded fast and he had been homesick 
and bewildered. 

And everything continued to be strange: the 
treeless country through which he was driven, a 
country of vast swells, like a motionless sea; the 
bald house, the group of huge red barns where he 
was lifted out and the crate door opened; the dogs, 
setters and pointers, who crowded about him when 
he was turned into the kennel yard. 

They eyed him with enmity, these dogs; they 
walked round and round him with stiffened tails; 
but he stood his ground staunchly for a youngster, 
returning fierce look for fierce look, growl for growl, 
until Larsen called him sharply and chained him 
to his own kennel. 

He wagged his tail, eager for friendship, as the 
man stooped to do so. He pushed his nose against 
the man’s knee, but receiving no word of encourage- 
ment, he crawled with dignity into his box. There 
he lay, panting with the strangeness of it all, and 
wondering. 

“One of George Devant’s pointers,” drawled 
Larsen to his assistant. “Pretty to look at but — 
er — timid about the eyes. I never did think much 
of that breed.” 

For days Comet remained chained to the kennel, 
a stranger in a strange land. A hundred times at 
the click of the gate announcing Larsen’s entrance 


COMET 


129 


he sprang to his feet and stared hungrily at the man 
for the light he was accustomed to see in human 
eyes. But with just a glance at him, Larsen always 
turned one or more of the other dogs loose and rode 
off to train them. 

This he could not understand. Yet he was not 
without friends of his own kind. He alone was 
chained up; and now and then another young dog 
strolled his way with wagging tail and lay down 
near by, in that strange bond of sympathy which is 
not confined to man. At these times Comet’s spirit 
returned; he would want to play, for he was still 
half puppy. Sometimes he picked up a stick, 
shook it, and his partner caught the other end. So 
they tugged and growled in mock ferocity, then lay 
down and looked at each other curiously. 

Had any attention been paid him by Larsen, 
Comet would have gotten over his homesickness. 
He was no milksop. He was like an overgrown 
boy off at college, or in some foreign city, sensitive, 
not sure of himself or his place in the order of things. 
Had Larsen gained his confidence, it would all have 
been different. And as for Larsen, he knew that 
perfectly well. 

One brisk sunny afternoon Larsen entered the 
yard, came straight to him, and turned him loose. 
So great was his joy at freedom that he did not see 
the shrewd light in the man’s eyes. In the ex- 


130 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

uberance of his spirit he ran round and round the 
yard barking into the faces of his friends. Larsen 
let him out of the yard, mounted his horse, and 
commanded him to heel. He obeyed with wagging 
tail. 

A mile or two down the road Larsen turned into the 
fields. Across his saddle was something the young 
pointer had had no experience with — a gun. That 
part of his education Thompson had neglected, or 
at least postponed, for he had not expected that 
Comet would be sent away so soon. That was 
where Thompson had made a mistake. 

At the command “Hie on!” the young pointer 
ran eagerly around the horse, looking up into the 
man’s face to be sure he had heard aright. Some- 
thing he saw there made him momentarily droop 
his ears and tail. Again there came over him the 
feeling of strangeness, of homesickness, mingled 
this time with dismay. Larsen’s eyes were slits of 
blue glass. His mouth was set in a thin line. 

Had Comet seen a different expression, had he 
received a single word of encouragement, there 
would have been no calamity that day. If he had 
trusted the man, he would have withstood the 
shock his nerves were about to receive. But he did 
not trust this pale man with the strange eyes and 
the hard-set mouth. 

At a second command, though, he gallopped 
swiftly, boldly into the field. Once he turned for 


COMET 


131 


direction and Larsen waved him on. Round and 
round the extensive field he circled, forgetting any 
feeling of strangeness, every fibre of his being intent 
on the hunt. Larsen, from his horse, watched with 
appraising eyes. 

Suddenly to the young dog’s nose came the smell, 
strong, pungent, compelling, of game birds. He 
stiffened into an earnest beautiful point. Hereto- 
fore, in the little training he had gone through, 
Thompson had come up behind him, flushed the 
birds and made him drop. And now Larsen, 
having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, 
hurried toward him as Thompson had done — ex- 
cept that in Larsen’s hand was the gun. 

The old-fashioned black powder of a generation 
ago makes a loud explosion. It sounds like a cannon 
compared with the modern smokeless powder used for 
almost a generation by nearly all hunters. Perhaps 
it was merely accident that had caused Larsen be- 
fore he left the house to load his pump gun with 
black-powder shells. 

As for Comet, he only knew that the birds rose 
with a whirr, and that then, above his head, burst 
an awful roar, almost splitting his ear drums, shock- 
ing every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror 
such as he had never felt before. Even then in the 
confusion and horror of the noise he turned to the 
man, ears ringing, eyes dilated. As for Larsen, he 
declared afterward, to others and to himself even, 


132 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


that he noticed no nervousness in the dog, that he 
was intent only on getting several birds for break- 
fast. 

Twice, three times, four times the pump gun 
bellowed its cannon-like roar, piercing the ear 
drums, shattering the nerves. Comet turned. One 
more glance backward at a face, pale, exultant. 
Then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he 
ran away from that blasting noise. 

There is this in fear, that once man or dog turns, 
fear increases. Witness the panic of armies, of the- 
atre audiences when the cry of fire is given. Faster 
and faster from that terror that seemed following 
him Comet sped. Miles and miles he ran. Now 
and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped. His 
tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear. Seeing 
a farmhouse, he made for that. It was noon hour 
and a group of men loitered about the yard. With 
the cry “Mad dog!” one ran into the house for a gun. 
When he came out the others told him that the dog 
was under the porch, and must only have had a fit. 
And under the porch, in fact, was Comet. Pressed 
against the wall in the comparative darkness, the 
magnificent pointer with the quivering soul waited, 
panting, eyes gleaming, horror still ringing in his 
ears. 

Here Larsen found him that afternoon. A boy 
crawled underneath and dragged him forth. He 
who had started life favoured of the gods, who that 


COMET 


133 


morning had been full of high spirit and pride, who 
had circled his first field like a champion, was a 
shrinking, cringing creature, like a homeless cur. 

The men laughed at the spectacle he made. To 
many people a gun-shy dog is, in his terror, a sight 
for mirth. Perhaps he is. Certainly he is as much 
so as a dog with a can tied to his tail. But some day 
neither sight will be funny to any human soul. 

As for Larsen, he kept repeating in sanctimonious 
tones that he had never been more astonished in 
his life, though to tell the truth he had never thought 
much of this breed of pointers. He was very sorry, 
he said, very sorry. But any one, peering at him 
from the bushes as he rode home, a dog with tucked 
tail at his horse’s heels, would have seen a shrewd 
smile on his face. 

And thus it happened that Comet came home in 
disgrace — a coward expelled from college, not for 
some youthful prank, but because he was yellow. 
And he knew he was disgraced. He saw it in the 
face of the big man Devant, who looked at him in 
the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, 
then turned away. He knew it because of what he 
saw in the face of Jim Thompson. 

In the house was a long plausible letter, ex- 
plaining how it had happened. “I did everything 
I could. I never was as much surprised in my life. 
The dog is hopeless.” 


134 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


As for the other inhabitants of the big house, 
their minds were full of the events of the season — 
de-luxe hunting parties, more society events than 
hunts; lunches served in the woods by uniformed 
butlers; launch rides up the river; arriving and 
departing guests. Only one of them except De- 
vant gave the gun-shy dog a thought. Marian 
Devant visited him in his disgrace. She stooped 
before him as she had done on that other and hap- 
pier day, and caught his head between her hands. 
But his eyes did not meet hers, for in his dim way he 
knew he was not now what he had been. 

“I don’t believe he’s yellow — inside!” she de- 
clared and looked at Thompson. 

Thompson shook his head. “I tried him with 
a gun, Miss Marian. Just showed it to him. He 
ran into his kennel.” 

“I’ll go get mine. I don’t believe he will run 
again.” 

But at sight of her small gun it all came back. 
Again he seemed to hear the explosion that had 
shattered his nerves. The terror had entered his 
soul. In spite of her pleading he made for his 
kennel. Even the girl turned away. And as he 
lay panting in the shelter of his box he knew that 
never again would men look at him as they had 
looked, nor life be sweet to him as it had been. 

Then came to Oak Hill an old man to see Thomp- 
son. He had been on many seas, had fought in 


COMET 


135 


a dozen wars, and had settled at last on a truck 
farm near by. Somewhere in a life full of adven- 
ture and odd jobs he had trained dogs and horses. 
His face was lined, his hair white, his eyes piercing, 
blue, and kind. Wade Swygert was his name. 

‘Til take him if you’re goin’ to give him away,” 
he said to Thompson. 

Give him away — who had been championship hope ! 

Marian Devant hurried out. She looked into 
the visitor’s face shrewdly, appraisingly. 

“Can you cure him?” she demanded. 

“I doubt it,” was the sturdy answer. 

“You will try?” 

“I’ll try.” 

“Then you can have him. And if there’s any 
expense ” 

“Come, Comet,” said the old man. 

That night, in a neat, humble house, Comet ate 
supper placed before him by a stout old woman, who 
had followed this old man to the ends of the world. 
That night he slept before their fire. Next day he 
followed the man all about the place. Several 
days and nights passed this way, then, while he lay 
before the fire, old Swygert came in with a gun. At 
sight of it Comet sprang to his feet. He tried to 
rush out of the room, but the doors were closed. 
Finally, he crawled under the bed. 

Every night after that Swygert got out the gun, 
until he crawled under the bed no more. Finally, 


136 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


one day the man fastened the dog to a tree in the 
yard, then came out with a gun. A sparrow lit 
in a tree, and he shot it. Comet tried to break the 
rope. All his panic had returned, but the report 
had not shattered him as that other did, for the gun 
was loaded light. 

After that, frequently the old man shot a bird 
in his sight, loading the gun more and more heavily, 
and each time, after the shot, coming to him, show- 
ing him the bird, and speaking to him kindly, 
gently. But for all that the terror remained in his 
heart. 

One afternoon Marian Devant, a young man 
with her, rode over on horseback. Swygert met 
her at the gate. 

“I don’t know,” he said, “whether I’m getting 
anywhere or not.” 

“I don’t believe he’s yellow. Not deep down. 
Do you?” 

“No,” said Swygert. “Just his ears, I think. 
They’ve been jolted beyond what’s common. I don’t 
know how. The spirit is willin’, but the ears are weak. 
I might deefen him. Punch ’em with a knife ” 

“That would be running away!” said the girl. 

Swygert looked at her keenly, on his face the 
approbation of an old man who has seen much. 

That night Mrs. Swygert told him she thought he 
had better give it up. It wasn’t worth the time and 
worry. The dog was just yellow. 


COMET 


137 


Swygert pondered a long time. “When I was 
a kid,” he said at last, “there came up a terrible 
thunderstorm. It was in South America. I was 
water boy for a railroad gang, and the storm drove 
us in a shack. While lightnin’ was hittin’ all 
around, one of the grown men told me it always 
picked out boys with red hair. My hair was red, 
an’ I was little and ignorant. For years I was 
skeered of lightnin’. I never have quite got over it. 
But no man ever said I was yellow.” 

Again he was silent for a while. Then he went 
on: “I don’t seem to be makin’ much headway, 
I admit that. I’m lettin’ him run away as far as 
he can. Now I’ve got to shoot an’ make him 
come toward the gun himself, right while I’m shootin’ 
it.” 

Next day Comet was tied up and fasted, and the 
next, until he was gaunt and famished. Then, on 
the afternoon of the third day, Mrs. Swygert, at 
her husband’s direction, placed before him, within 
reach of his chain, some raw beefsteak. As he 
started for it, Swygert shot. He drew back, pant- 
ing, then, hunger getting the better of him, started 
again. Again Swygert shot. 

After that for days Comet “ate to music,” as 
Swygert expressed it. “Now,” he said, “he’s got 
to come toward the gun when he’s not even tied up.” 

Not far from Swygert’s house is a small pond, and 
on one side the banks are perpendicular. Toward 


138 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


this pond the old man, with the gun under his arm 
and the dog following, went. Here in the silence of 
the woods, with just the two of them together, was 
to be a final test. 

On the shelving bank Swygert picked up a stick 
and tossed it into the middle of the pond with the 
command to “ fetch. ” Comet sprang eagerly in 
and retrieved it. Twice this was repeated. But 
the third time, as the dog approached the shore, 
Swygert picked up the gun and fired. 

Quickly the dog dropped the stick, then turned 
and swam toward the other shore. Here, so pre- 
cipitous were the banks, he could not get a foothold. 
He turned once more and struck out diagonally 
across the pond. Swygert met him and fired. 

Over and over it happened. Each time, after he 
fired, the old man stooped down with extended hand 
and begged him to come on. His face was grim, 
and though the day was cool sweat stood out on 
his brow. “You’ll face the music,” he said, “or 
you’ll drown. Better be dead than called yellow.” 

The dog was growing weary. His head was 
barely above water. His efforts to clamber up the 
opposite bank were feeble, frantic. Yet, each time 
as he drew near the shore Swygert fired. 

He was not using light loads now. He was using 
the regular load of the bird hunter. Time had 
passed for temporizing. The sweat was standing 
out all over his face. The sternness in his eyes was 


COMET 139 

terrible to see, for it was the sternness of a man 
who is suffering. 

A dog can swim a long time. The sun dropped 
over the trees. Still the firing went on, regularly, 
like a minute gun. 

Just before the sun set an exhausted dog stag- 
gered toward an old man, almost as exhausted as he. 
The dog had been too near death and was too faint 
to care for the gun that was being fired over his 
head. On and on he came, toward the man, dis- 
regarding the noise of the gun. It would not hurt 
him, that he knew at last. He might have many 
enemies, but the gun, in the hands of this man, was 
not one of them. Suddenly old Swygert sank down 
and took the dripping dog in his arms. 

“Old boy,” he said, “old boy.” 

That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked 
straight into the eyes of a man, as he used to look 
in the old days. 

Next season, Larsen, glancing over his sporting 
papers, was astonished to see that among promising 
Derbys the fall trials had called forth was a pointer 
named Comet. He would have thought it some 
other dog than the one who had disappointed him 
so by turning out gun-shy, in spite of all his efforts 
to prevent, had it not been for the fact that the 
entry was booked as Comet; owner, Miss Marian 
Devant; handler, Wade Swygert. 

Next year he was still more astonished to see in 


140 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


the same paper that Comet, handled by Swygert, 
had won first place in a Western trial, and was 
prominently spoken of as a National Championship 
possibility. As for him, he had no young entries to 
offer, but was staking everything on the National 
Championship, where he was to enter Larsen’s 
Peerless II. 

It was strange how things fell out — but things 
have a habit of turning out strangely in field trials, 
as well as elsewhere. When Larsen reached Breton 
Junction where the National Championship was to 
be run, there on the street, straining at the leash 
held by old Swygert, whom he used to know, was 
a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a 
brown head, and a brown saddle spot — the same 
pointer he had seen two years before turn tail and 
run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes. 

But the strangest thing of all happened that night 
at the drawing, when, according to the slips taken 
at random from a hat, it was declared that on the 
following Wednesday, Comet, the pointer, was to 
run with Peerless II. 

It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement. 

He left the meeting and went straightway to his 
room. There for a long time he sat pondering. 
Next day at a hardware store he bought some black 
powder and some shells. 

The race was to be run next day, and that night 
in his room he loaded half-a-dozen shells. It would 


COMET 


141 


have been a study in faces to watch him as he bent 
over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells 
he packed all the powder they could stand, all the 
powder his trusted gun could stand, without bursting. 
It was a load big enough to kill a bear, to bring 
down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and 
reecho in the hills. 

On the morning that Larsen walked out in front 
of the judges and the field. Peerless II at the leash, 
old Swygert with Comet at his side, he glanced 
around at the “field,” or spectators. Among them 
was a handsome young woman and with her, to 
his amazement, George Devant. He could not 
help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what 
would happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, 
always a gun-shy dog — that was his experience. 

As for Comet, he faced the strawfields eagerly, 
confidently, already a veteran. Long ago fear of 
the gun had left him, for the most part. There 
were times, when at a report above his head, he 
still trembled and the shocked nerves in his ear 
gave a twinge like that of a bad tooth. But always 
at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew 
steady, and remained staunch. 

Some disturbing memory did start within him 
to-day as he glanced at the man with the other dog. 
It seemed to him as if in another and an evil world 
he had seen that face. His heart began to pound 
fast and his tail drooped for a moment. Within 


142 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

an hour it was all to come back to him — the terror, 
the panic, the agony of that far-away time. 

He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, 
and to whom his soul belonged, though he was booked 
as the property of Miss Marian Devant. Of the 
arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. 
Old Swygert, having cured him, could not meet the 
expenses of taking him to field trials. The girl had 
come to the old man’s assistance, an assistance which 
he had accepted only under condition that the 
dog should be entered as hers, with himself as 
handler. 

“Are you ready, gentlemen?” the judges asked. 

“Ready,” said Larsen and old Swygert. 

And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away 
across that field, and behind them came handlers 
and judges and spectators, all mounted. 

It was a race people still talk about, and for a 
reason, for strange things happened that day. At 
first there was nothing unusual. It was like any 
other field trial. Comet found birds and Swygert, 
his handler, flushed them and shot. Comet re- 
mained steady. Then Peerless II found a covey 
and Larsen flushed them and shot. And so for an 
hour it went. 

Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, 
riding hard and looking for him, went out of sight 
over a hill. But Comet had not gone far. As a 
matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high 


COMET 


143 


straw, pointing a covey of birds. One of the specta- 
tors spied him, and called the judges’ attention to 
him. Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, 
but still Swygert had not come back. 

They called him, but the old man was a little 
deaf. Some of the men rode to the top of the hill 
but could not see him. In his zeal, he had got a 
considerable distance away. Meanwhile, here was 
his dog, pointed. 

If any one had looked at Larsen’s face he would 
have seen the exultation there, for now his chance 
had come — the very chance he had been looking for. 
It’s a courtesy one handler sometimes extends an- 
other who is absent from the spot, to go in and flush 
his dog’s birds. 

“I’ll handle this covey for Mr. Swygert,” said 
Larsen to the judges, his voice smooth and plausible, 
on his face a smile. 

And thus it happened that Comet faced his su- 
preme ordeal without the steadying voice of his god. 
He only knew that ahead of him were birds, and 
that behind him a man was coming through the 
straw, and that behind the man a crowd of people 
on horseback were watching him. He had become 
used to that but when, out of the corner of his eye 
he saw the face of the advancing man, his soul began 
to tremble. 

“Call your dog in, Mr. Larsen,” directed the 
judge. “Make him backstand.” 


144 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


Only a moment was lost while Peerless, a young 
dog himself, came running in and at a command 
from Larsen stopped in his tracks behind Comet, 
and pointed. Larsen’s dogs always obeyed, quickly, 
mechanically. Without ever gaining their con- 
fidence, Larsen had a way of turning them into 
finished field- trial dogs. They obeyed because 
they were afraid not to. 

According to the rules the man handling the dog 
has to shoot as the birds rise. This is done in order 
to test the dog’s steadiness when a gun is fired over 
him. No specification is made as to the size of the 
shotgun to be used. Usually, however, small-gauge 
guns are carried. The one in Larsen’s hands was 
a twelve-gauge, and consequently large. 

All morning he had been using it over his own dog. 
Nobody had paid any attention to it, because he 
shot smokeless powder. But now, as he advanced, 
he reached into the left-hand pocket of his hunting 
coat, where six shells rattled as he hurried along. 
Two of these he took out and rammed into the 
barrels. 

As for Comet, still standing rigid, statuesque, he 
heard, as has been said, the brush of steps through 
the straw, glimpsed a face, and trembled. But only 
for a moment. Then he steadied, head high, tail 
straight out. The birds rose with a whirr — and 
then was repeated that horror of his youth. Above 
his ears, ears that would always be tender, broke a 


COMET 


145 


great roar. Either because of his excitement, or 
because of a sudden wave of revenge, or of a deter- 
mination to make sure of the dog’s flight, Larsen had 
pulled both triggers at once. The combined report 
shattered through the dog’s ear drums, it shivered 
through his nerves, he sank in agony into the straw. 

Then the old impulse to flee was upon him, and 
he sprang to his feet, and looked about wildly. But 
from somewhere in that crowd behind him came to 
his tingling ears a voice — clear, ringing, deep, the 
voice of a woman — a woman he knew — pleading as 
his master used to plead, calling on him not to run 
but to stand. 

“Steady,” it said. “Steady, Comet!” 

It called him to himself, it soothed him, it calmed 
him, and he turned and looked toward the crowd. 
With the roar of the shotgun the usual order ob- 
served in field trials was broken up. All rules seemed 
to have been suspended. Ordinarily, no one be- 
longing to “the field” is allowed to speak to a dog. 
Yet the girl had spoken to him. Ordinarily, the 
spectators must remain in the rear of the judges. 
Yet one of the judges had himself wheeled his horse 
about and was galloping off, and Marian Devant 
had pushed through the crowd and was riding toward 
the bewildered dog. 

He stood staunch where he was, though in his 
ears was still a throbbing pain, and though all about 
him was this growing confusion he could not under- 


146 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


stand. The man he feared was running across the 
field yonder, in the direction taken by the judge. 
He was blowing his whistle as he ran. Through 
the crowd, his face terrible to see, his own master was 
coming. Both the old man and the girl had dis- 
mounted now and were running toward him. 

“I heard,” old Swygert was saying to her. “I 
heard it! I might ’a’ known! I might V known!” 

“He stood,” she panted, “like a rock — oh, the 
brave, beautiful thing!” 

“Where is that ” Swygert suddenly checked 

himself and looked around. 

A man in the crowd (they had all gathered about 
now) laughed. 

“He’s gone after his dog,” he said. “Peerless 
has run away!”, 


VII 

THE CRISIS IN 25 


„ He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us 
v He made and loveth all. 

S OMETHING was wrong with little Tommy 
Earle. Consequently, something was wrong 
with the whole Earle plantation. Frank, 
the Earle dog — a stately Irish setter, rich in the 
wisdom and devotion of the nobly bred bird dog — 
Frank had sensed it yesterday afternoon. The boy 
had not come out of the house until long after din- 
ner. Then he had strolled off forlornly and in 
silence toward the garage. His frowsy head had 
been bowed as if he were studying his own little 
shadow at his feet. His wide blue eyes — they were 
exactly on a level with the dog’s anxiously inquiring 
ones — had had in them a suggestion of pain and 
helplessness, of dependence on things bigger than 
himself. 

He had made no outcry; Tommy was something 
of a stoic. In fact, he had said nothing at all. But 
147 


148 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


that look had gone straight to the dog’s heart. 
Since hunting season was over he had been self- 
appointed guardian of this boy. The two had come 
to understand one another as boys and dogs under- 
stand. There was no need of words now. Frank 
understood; something hurt the boy inside. 

The young mother had run out, her face anxious, 
and had taken Tommy in out of the sun. He had 
not seemed to mind going in, and that would have 
been enough of itself. Frank had followed them 
up on the porch; the screen door had slammed in his 
face. He had strolled off, tail depressed; he had 
lain down in the shade of the front-walk hedge, his 
ears pricked toward the big white house with the 
columned porch. It had remained ominously si- 
lent inside. The boy had not come out again. The 
long June afternoon had passed brooding and va- 
cant, as if it were Sunday and all the people on the 
plantation had gone to church. 

Now another morning was here. But instead 
of the boy running out to greet it a man in a car 
was driving up the heavy shaded avenue of oaks that 
led from the big road. Frank met him as he got out 
of his car, looked up anxiously into his spectacled 
face, whiffed the strange-smelling satchel he carried, 
escorted him gravely up the steps. Steve Earle, 
the boy’s father, the dog’s master, shook hands 
with the man and led him into the house. Again 
the screen door banged in the dog’s face. 


TEE CRISIS IN 25 


149 


Nose pressed against it, he watched the two men 
go down the wide cool hall and turn into the bed- 
room. He heard the spectacled man talking in 
there, then Steve Earle, then Marian Earle, the 
boy’s mother, but not the boy, prick his ears as he 
would. He sat down on his haunches, panting and 
whining softly to himself. He lay down, head be- 
tween his paws, agate-brown eyes deep with worry. 
Still no sound of the boy. He got up and fumbled 
at the screen door with his paw, fumbled sternly, all 
concentration on his task. 

It was not the first time he had turned the trick. 
He managed to catch the lower frame with his claw, 
and, before the door sprang shut, to insert his nose. 
The rest was easy and he went silently down the 
hall. He stopped in the bedroom doorway. The boy 
was the centre of attention: he was sitting on his 
mother’s lap; the spectacled man, satchel at his feet, 
was leaning forward toward him; Steve Earle stood 
above them, looking down. 

The dog’s ears drooped. Usually where the boy 
was, there was also noise. But this room was very 
quiet. The shades had been partly pulled; in con- 
trast with the brilliant out of doors it looked dim 
in here, like late afternoon. The mother was 
smoothing the boy’s hair back from his forehead. 
There was something helpless in the head leaned 
against the mother’s breast and in the dangling, list- 
less feet. 


150 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


Frank took a tentative step forward. In winter 
he was welcomed always to the fire, but in summer 
they said he brought in flies. Now no one seemed 
to notice him, though he was a big fellow and red. 
He took another step into the room, his eyes fastened 
longingly on the boy’s flushed face. Suddenly his 
long tail began to beat an eager tattoo against the 
bureau. The boy’s eyes had looked straight into his. 

“F’ank?” 

The mother glanced round. “I told Frank he 
mustn’t come into the house, dear.” 

“Why can’t he stay wif me, Mama?” 

The voice was complaining, as if Tommy were 
about to cry, and Tommy seldom cried. Then he 
seemed to forget, and usually when he wanted any- 
thing he kept on till he got it. The dog watched 
closely while Steve Earle lifted him out of the 
mother’s lap and placed him on the bed. Then he 
made his way to the foot of the bed and lay down 
firmly and with an air of quiet finality. He would 
stay here until this strangeness passed away. 

But Earle, following the spectacled man out of 
the room, stopped in the doorway. 

“Come on, Frank!” 

He raised his eyes beseechingly to his master’s 
face, then dropped his head between his paws, his 
bushy tail dragging underneath the bed. 

“Come on, old man!” 

He got slowly to his feet; he looked regretfully 


TEE CRISIS IN 25 151 

at the sturdy little figure on the bed; he tried to 
catch the mother’s eye — sometimes she interposed 
in his behalf. A little sullenly he followed the two 
men out of the house. 

“That’s my advice, Earle,” the spectacled man 
said as he climbed into his car. “They can take 
better care of him there. The roads are good — 
you can drive slowly. I wouldn’t put it off; I 
would go right away.” 

Earle went into the house and the dog strolled 
through the back yard, past the cabin of Aunt 
Cindy the cook to the shaded side of the garage. 
Here under the eaves was a ditch the boy had been 
digging to take off water. He had worked on it 
all one rainy morning shortly before, a cool, gusty 
morning, the last gasp of spring before the present 
first hot spell of summer. Aunt Cindy had dis- 
covered him wet to the skin and made a great fuss 
about it. 

Now the shovel was stuck up where the boy had 
been forced to leave off and the little wagon, partly 
filled with dirt, stood near by, its idle tongue on the 
ground. Tail wagging, the dog whiffed the shovel, 
the ditch, the wagon. Then he lay down beside 
the wagon, and looked off over the hills and bottoms 
of the plantation quivering in the morning heat. 

At the hum of the car out of the garage he sprang 
up and followed it to the side of the porch. Earle 
ran up the steps into the house. When he presently 


152 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


returned Marian and Aunt Cindy were with him 
and he carried the boy in his arms. He laid him 
gently on the back seat of the car with his mother. 
They were going to Greenville, the father said. 
When they came back he could sit on the front seat 
like a man. Aunt Cindy handed in the valise; just 
a glimpse the dog got of the little upturned sandals 
on the back seat, and Earle had closed the door. 
The car drove slowly off down the avenue, the sun- 
light that pierced the foliage flashing at intervals on 
its top. The dog looked up into Aunt Cindy’s 
ample black face. She shook her head and went 
back into the house. 

He sat down on his haunches, panting, then swal- 
lowing, then panting again. He had never been 
allowed to follow the car. He watched it turn into 
the road; the woods hid it from sight. He got to 
his feet and looked round. A curtain upstairs was 
waving out in the slight breeze, but from all the 
windows came no sound. He trotted down the 
avenue and stopped, nose pointed in the direction 
in which the car had gone. He galloped to the 
shining road. Up the hill beyond the creek bottoms 
he made out the car, crawling slowly. He pricked 
his ears toward it; his eyes grew stern; where were 
they taking that boy? A moment he stood hesitat- 
ing, then bounded off after the car. 

Miles away he caught up and galloped softly be- 
hind, trying to take advantage of the slight shade 


TEE CRISIS IN 25 


153 


it offered. His tongue was hanging out, dust was 
caked in his eyes, the sun baked down on his heavy 
red coat, the road flew dizzily underneath. He 
could not stand this pace much longer on such a 
day — he could not stand it at all if Earle took a 
notion to drive as he usually drove. When the car 
slowed up at a hill he ran round it, looking up into 
his master’s face. The car stopped and Earle leaned 
over the door, his eyes stern. 

“Go back home, sir!” 

The dog stood his ground, panting like an engine. 

The command was repeated. 

Dizzy with heat, he sat down, eyes half closed, 
fangs showing with the contraction of his panting, 
frothing chops, saliva dripping in the road. 

Earle turned round, smiling grimly. “What had 
we best do, Marian?” 

“Mama” — it was the boy’s voice — “is it F’ank?” 

“Yes, dear; you must lie still now.” 

“Let him go, Mama.” 

She spoke quickly: “Take him in, Steve.” 

It was midday when they reached the city. Sit- 
ting upright on the seat beside his master, the dog 
forgot everything else in the procession of crowding 
wagons and cars and people — strange sights to his 
country eyes. He lost all sense of direction when, 
honking, feeling his way, Earle turned down this 
street and that, the crowd, the noise, the life ever 
increasing. Eyes aglow, the dog looked behind at 


154 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

the boy. Tommy was trying to sit up. Everything 
was all right now. 

But excitement quickly gave place to appre- 
hension. In front of a long building set up on a 
terrace, with white porches running across the front, 
Earle lifted the boy out of the car and Marian got 
out with the valise. Earle turned half around and 
under his broad panama hat looked at the dog with 
masterful eyes. 

“You stay there!” 

Head hanging over the door of the car, eyes a 
little resentful, the dog watched Earle bear the 
helpless boy up those steps shining in the sun, saw 
a woman in white meet them, take Earle’s hat off 
his head and shade the boy’s face, saw the three 
disappear through the wide door. People were 
passing, wagons clattering, cars honking; but he 
kept his eyes fastened on the door. A breath of 
air brought to his nose from the building a smell 
unlike any that rises from woods or fields. Nose 
quivering, he noted it carefully, catalogued in it 
that strange variety of things his nose told him. 
He would never forget that smell or its associations. 

Earle came out at last — came out alone. They 
drove home together. Aunt Cindy cooked supper 
for them. Afterward the dog stayed on the front 
porch, where Earle smoked one silent pipe after 
another, then knocked the ashes out on the banisters 
and went into the house. The dog heard him tele- 


THE CRISIS IN 25 


155 


phoning; heard the names Marian and Tommy; 
listened till it was over, then came down the steps 
and strolled round the house. A thin wisp of 
new moon, before it set that night, looked mildly 
down on him curled up in a bundle at the foot of a 
little wagon out by the garage. 

Next afternoon before he left Earle chained him 
to his kennel. 

“Guess I better,” he apologized. 

Aunt Cindy, who had watched the performance, 
shook her head. 

“Dat dawg knows,” she declared; “he shorely 
knows ! ” 

“I should think,” said Earle, rising, “the way 
the boy worries him, he would be glad of a little 
peace.” 

“Well, he like grown folks, Mr. Steve, he love to 
be bothered by chillun. Dis place daid widout 
dat boy. Lorsy, lorsy!” 

Earle drove off in the car and the old woman 
went into the house. Usually she sang as she 
waddled about her work — now she was silent. All 
afternoon the dog lay, nose pointed toward the 
distant city. He could see across the orchard 
where one day not long before Tommy had picked 
up June apples off the ground and put them in a 
basket, down the hill to the creek bottoms. He 
could see the creek itself flashing here and there 
through clumps of trees, the creek where Tommy 


156 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


used to throw sticks for him to fetch. He spent his 
captivity in dignified resentment. 

But he quickly forgot his grievance when at dusk 
he heard the hum of the returning car. He ran 
as far as he could to meet it, his tail slapping the 
taut chain. When Earle drove into the yard and 
turned him loose he ran to the car, he jumped up on 
the running board; he stared at the empty back 
seat. 

“Nothing doing, old man,” said Earle gently as 
he turned away. 

So the strange days passed. Every morning he 
followed Earle about the plantation; every after- 
noon he was chained up; every evening he was 
given his freedom till next day. Things did not 
mend. Earle grew more silent, his conferences 
with Aunt Cindy briefer, the worry in his gray 
eyes deeper. The dog saw it plainer at night than 
at any other time, when out on the porch Earle lit 
his pipe; read it unmistakably in the flaring up of 
the match against the man’s face out here in the 
dark. Then he laid his head on the man’s knee and 
Earle pulled his ear, while up in the blackness of 
the big oaks crickets rattled and sawed without 
ceasing. 

At last one afternoon from in front of his kennel he 
watched a heavy thunder cloud gather over the hills 
and come rumbling toward him. The sky grew 
black; the orchard trees, the creek bottoms, the 


THE CRISIS IN 25 


157 


distant hills took on strange colours, as if autumn 
had miraculously come. Out of her cabin hurried 
Aunt Cindy and toward the garage, her white apron 
like a flag of truce flapping against the oncoming 
storm. He watched her put the shovel into the 
little wagon and pull the wagon into the black- 
smith shop. The door creaked loudly as she closed 
it. Back to her cabin she hurried, leaning against 
the wind. Tail tucked, the dog crawled deep into 
his kennel and listened to the roar of the storm. 

It had passed when Earle drove into the yard and 
turned him loose. So had the ditch the boy had 
dug that rainy morning — washed full of sand now, 
and a stick horse that had leaned idle against the lot 
fence was blown down prostrate on the ground. 
Earle didn’t want any supper, he told Aunt Cindy 
as he went into the house. He did not come out 
on the porch that night, and the dog sought his 
sleeping place beside the garage. It was meaning- 
less now that the wagon was gone. Restless, 
lonely, strangely excited, he came back and guardedly 
manipulated the screen door. 

He glanced in the living room. Earle in an easy 
chair was staring at a shaded lamp while he smoked 
his pipe. Unobserved, the dog went silently down 
the hall. As he neared the bedroom door a quick 
obsession seized him that the boy might be in there. 
Ears pricked, he stepped quickly in and put his 
head on the little bed beside the big one. It was 


158 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

empty. He walked round the room, whiffing this 
object and that; then he lay down at the foot of 
the bed. 

Here Earle found him. It would be all right, 
the man said, looking down on him from his splen- 
did height. Pretty lonely, wasn’t it? He sat down 
and unlaced one shoe: he held it in his hand a long 
time before he dropped it and unlaced the other. 
Half undressed, he sat silent, looking steadily into 
the dog’s eyes. Sometimes when they were to- 
gether this way he talked as if to another man. 
The bed creaked when he climbed in. Out of doors 
raindrops from the late storm dripped from the 
trees. Somewhere over the hills a hound was bay- 
ing dismally. Frank curled up and slept. 

He was awakened by the violent ringing of the 
telephone bell out in the hall. He was on his 
feet when Earle sprang out of bed and hurried 
barefoot to it. Even after the man started talking, 
the echo of that alarm bell still sounded in the 
vacant house, up the broad stairs, into the empty 
bedrooms above. Earle came back and got into 
his clothes, his hands as he laced his shoes tremb- 
ling a bit. He hurried out of the house and jumped 
into the car. Intent on the slippery road ahead, 
he did not see the dog’s eyes shining wildly in the 
glare of his lights as he rounded the curve at the 
foot of the avenue. 

Ears erect, Frank stood for a moment staring at 


THE CRISIS IN 25 


159 


the vanishing rear light, then dashed frantically 
after it. He was in the pride of his strength and 
endurance. He was the fastest of all bird dogs, 
the Irish setter. Yet that mad car drew almost as 
swiftly away as if he were standing still in the road 
staring idly after it. Every muscle straining, he 
followed it, until the light melted into the distance. 
Even then, nose to the ground, he rushed the trail 
of those familiar wheels. At last, panting and froth- 
ing, he stopped. The night was silent. Even the 
roar had died away — as if it had never been. He 
looked bewilderedly around at the dusky fields, the 
foggy stars. But he continued to gallop toward the 
city. 

The fingers of the lighted clock above the hospital 
door pointed to eleven as Earle ran up the steps. 
The night was warm, the front door open, and he 
hurried down the dim-lighted corridor. A light 
shone out of 25, and he stepped quickly in. 

It was an open room, with a screened portion 
projecting out on the porch. In this portion was 
the bed. The young doctor standing at the foot 
glanced at him with a contraction of the muscles 
about the corners of the mouth. From the bed 
over which she leaned Marian raised to him eyes 
that told the story. Opposite Marian the nurse was 
stroking the little head and chest. 

From between the two women came now and then 
a plaintive, inarticulate murmuring, a tired echo. 


160 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


it seemed, of what must have been going on long 
before he came. The young doctor stepped quietly 
to him. The fever had started rising rapidly an hour 
before, he explained, and the boy had grown delirious. 
It was the crisis — sooner than they expected. 

In spite of the pounding of his heart, Steve’s low- 
pitched question sounded matter-of-fact enough. 
“What would you say of him?” 

The doctor looked the father narrowly and 
solemnly in the eyes. “He’s a very ill child, Mr. 
Earle.” 

Steve nodded quickly. “Is there anything I can 
do?” 

The doctor shook his head. 

Somewhere a bell rang; a nurse’s skirts rustled as 
she passed the door. Earle sat down, his hat on his 
knees, staring helplessly. 

“F’ank?” 

The thin little voice on the bed was shrill and com- 
plaining. The women’s heads met above it. 

“Mother’s here. Mother’s here, darling.” 

“A playmate?” asked the doctor. 

Earle shook his head. “No; a dog.” 

“F’ank?” 

Earle got up, went out of the room, down the 
corridor, out on the porch. He sank on a bench and 
buried his face in his hands. 

“God!” he whispered, “I can’t stand that!” 

When he came back, for he could not stay away. 


TEE CRISIS IN 25 161 

Marian met him in the middle of the room, her 
flushed face and dilated eyes raised to his. 

“Steve — he’s growing excited. He’s wearing him- 
self out. Go for Frank!” 

Earle looked beyond her at the bed. The cheeks 
were crimson, the eyes half closed; through the 
narrowed slits they burned upward like fire. Earle 
turned to the doctor. 

“What about it?” 

“How long will it take, Mr. Earle?” 

“Two hours.” 

“Yes — I should go — right away!” 

Earle crossed the room to the nurse sitting be- 
side the bed. “It won’t matter?” he asked. “It 
won’t excite him?” 

She shook her head. 

He sank on his knees beside the bed, his big arm 
braced over the heaving little chest, his eyes drink- 
ing in the light in those narrowed unseeing ones. 

The lips were incredibly hot. 

“Old scout!” he choked in the little ear. 

He did not look at the faces as he hurried out of 
the room, nor back at the building when he jumped 
into his car. He roared through the city, into the 
silent country. He glimpsed the stone mileposts 
flash past. He glanced now and then at the clock 
in the front of the car. He had set an almost im- 
possible time. But he was halfway home at mid- 
night. As he rounded a sharp curve his lights 


162 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

flashed on something far ahead in the road — a hog or 
perhaps a prowling dog. It sprang aside into the 
bushes. He passed the spot with a roar. 

Behind him Frank leaped back into the road, and 
stood for a moment staring after the car. He had 
gotten a glimpse, a whiff — he had thought he knew 
it. But that car was going the wrong way. He 
must have been mistaken. Wearily he turned and 
galloped on toward the city. 

He had come many miles. He had many miles 
yet to go. From sleeping farmhouses dogs bayed 
him as he passed, running like a big fox, silent and 
swift. The road turned and twisted among hills 
and small mountains. Ahead in the sky was a glow 
unlike the glow of coming day. It grew brighter 
with the passing miles. It drew him on. The dis- 
tance would have meant little to him, except for the 
tremendous speed at which he had been travelling. 
Now his chest was flecked with foam. His tail, 
carried usually so proudly, followed the curve of his 
haunches. His overstrained muscles worked me- 
chanically like pistons. His heart pounded his 
long, lean red ribs. 

Dizzy, almost famished, he came at last to the 
top of a hill and stopped, ears erect. Below him 
stretched rows of twinkling lights that, all together, 
made up the glow in the sky. That was the city 
with the strange building into which they had carried 
Tommy Earle! 


TEE CRISIS IN 25 


163 


He could afford to rest, now that he was so near. 
To the side of the road grew bushes to which cool- 
ness and moisture clung. Sides heaving, he scraped 
his back against them, his heavy tail wagging with 
inward satisfaction, the glow from those distant 
lights reflected dimly in his eyes. Then he sank 
down on his stomach, panting out loud in the sultry 
stillness. 

A roar, a blinding glare were upon him before he 
sprang wildly to his feet. The wind rushed past as 
the car flashed by. He glimpsed Earle’s tense face. 

Again he dashed after the rear light — again it drew 
away from him. He left the road again — just be- 
hind the car. Once more it was leaving him. In 
his desperation he began to bark as he ran. Above 
the roar his frantic, enraged yelps pierced the night. 
He heard the crunching of brakes. 

“Frank!” cried the man. 

The door was flung open. He jumped in and up 
on the padded seat. The car swished smoothly and 
swiftly over black, moist, oily streets, past inter- 
minable lights. Every muscle of the dog began to 
quiver. He looked with shining eyes into his 
master’s face, choked, and swallowed. 

Suddenly he rose on the seat, feet together. Down 
the street had come the smell, unlike any that rises 
from woods or fields, the smell he would never for- 
get. It drew closer. The car turned in toward the 
curb. Earle spoke quickly. But the dog had leaped 


164 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


over the door of the car and landed in the middle of 
the sidewalk. He took the steps three at a time. 
Down the dim, silent corridor floated the pungent 
smell. Earle was at his side, had caught him by the 
mane, had opened the door, was holding him back. 

“Steady, old man!” he said. “Steady!” 

They hurried together down the shining hall. 
They turned into a strange room. Over there, 
lips parted, his mistress had sprung to her feet. 
There were others in here — a man, a woman in 
white — but he hardly saw them. For on white 
sheets, face upturned and crimson, eyes half closed, 
lay little Tommy Earle. 

The mother was on her knees now, leaning far 
over the boy. Her face was flushed like his face. 
She was smiling down eagerly into the strange, 
up-turning eyes. “Look!” she was pleading. “Look 
at Mother, darling. Be quiet — listen! Here’s Frank 
— come to see you!” 

She caught the dog convulsively to her, so close 
he could feel the pounding of her heart. “Help 
me, Steve!” she panted. 

She picked the boy’s hand up and placed it on the 
shaggy head. She pressed the little fingers together. 
She slipped her arm under the pillow and turned the 
burning face toward the dog. “Now!” she smiled. 
“You see him, don’t you, dear! Mother told you 

he would come, didn’t she? Mother told you 

Ah!” she gasped. 


THE CRISIS IN 25 


165 


Long after the boy had gazed in recognition into 
the deep, longing eyes of the dog, then with a wistful 
little smile up into the mother’s face; long after his 
eyes had closed in that profound sleep which marks 
the breaking up of delirium and fever, Frank sat 
on his haunches beside the bed, his patient head on 
the covers. 

He licked the hand of the boy, then glanced up 
inquiringly into the face of the mother who sat be- 
side him. She shook her head and he licked it no 
more. 

Later she whispered to him that he could lie down 
now, and nodded at the floor at her feet. He under- 
stood, but he did not move. 

The muscles of his haunches were cruelly cramped 
when the nurse snapped off the light. In the pale 
light growing luminous and pink and gradually 
suffusing the room Tommy Earle opened his eyes. 
First they looked up into the happy face of the 
mother, then at Steve Earle standing at the foot of 
the bed, then straight and clear into the faithful 
eyes of his friend. 

The cramped muscles quivered and jerked, the 
long tail beat the floor. He wanted to leap on the 
bed, to rush round the room. The mother caught 
him by the mane. He must be still, she said. 

The voice of Tommy Earle when he spoke was 
as gentle and clear as the chirp of half-awakened 
birds out of the window. 


166 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“F’ank?” he said. 

Steve Earle had to hold the dog now — had to drag 
him away from the bed. They brought him a pan 
of water. They made him lie down. They came 
softly in, nurses and internes, and looked at him. 
He lay beside the bed, relaxed now, but panting 
slightly, his eyes still aglow. They said it was a 
wonderful thing he had done. And one of them, 
she was young and radiant, gazed long and steadily, 
as if fascinated, into his gentle, brave eyes, up- 
raised to hers. 

“He knows what he’s done!” she said. 


VIII 

THE TRIAL IN TOM BELCHER’S STORE 


I T WAS a plain case of affinity between Davy 
Allen and Old Man Thorny croft’s hound dog 
Buck. Davy, hurrying home along the country 
road one cold winter afternoon, his mind intent on 
finishing his chores before dark, looked back after 
passing Old Man Thornycroft’s house to find Buck 
trying to follow him — trying to, because the old man, 
who hated to see anybody or anything but himself 
have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to 
keep him from doing what nature had intended him 
to do — roam the woods and poke his long nose in 
every briar patch after rabbits. 

At the sight Davy stopped, and the dog came on, 
dragging behind him in the road the block of wood 
fastened by a chain to his collar and trying at the 
same time to wag his tail. He was tan-coloured, 
lean as a rail, long-eared, a hound every inch; and 
Davy was a ragged country boy who lived alone with 
his mother, and who had an old single-barrel shot- 
gun at home, and who had in his grave boy’s eyes a 
look, clear and unmistakable, of woods and fields. 
167 


168 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


To say it was love at first sight when that hound, 
dragging his prison around with him, looked up into 
the boy’s face, and when that ragged boy who loved 
the woods and had a gun at home looked down into 
the hound’s eyes, would hardly be putting it strong 
enough. It was more than love — it was perfect un- 
derstanding, perfect comprehension. “ I’m your dog,” 
said the hound’s upraised, melancholy eyes. “I’ll 
jump rabbits and bring them around for you to shoot. 
I’ll make the frosty hills echo with music for you. 
I’ll follow you everywhere you go. I’m your dog if 
you want me — yours to the end of my days.” 

And Davy, looking down into those upraised, be- 
seeching eyes, and at that heavy block of wood, and 
at the raw place the collar had worn on the neck, 
then at Old Man Thornycroft’s bleak, unpainted 
house on the hill, with the unhomelike yard and the 
tumble-down fences, felt a great pity, the pity of 
the free for the imprisoned, and a great longing to 
own, not a dog, but this dog. 

“Want to come along?” he grinned. 

The hound sat down on his haunches, elevated 
his long nose, and poured out to the cold winter sky 
the passion and longing of his soul. Davy understood, 
shook his head, looked once more into the pleading 
eyes, then at the bleak house from which this pris- 
oner had dragged himself. 

“That ol’ devil!” he said. “He ain’t fitten to 
own a dog. Oh, I wish he was mine!” 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 169 

A moment he hesitated there in the road, then 
he turned and hurried away from temptation. 

“He ain’t mine,” he muttered. “Oh, dammit 
all!” 

But temptation followed him as it has followed 
many a boy and man. A little way down the road 
was a pasture through which by a footpath he could 
cut off half a mile of the three miles that lay between 
him and home. Poised on top of the high rail fence 
that bordered the road, he looked back. The hound 
was still trying to follow, walking straddle-legged, 
head down, all entangled with the taut chain that 
dragged the heavy block. The boy watched the 
frantic efforts, pity and longing on his face, then he 
jumped off the fence inside the pasture and hurried 
on down the hill, face set straight ahead. 

He had entered a pine thicket when he heard 
behind the frantic, choking yelps of a dog in dire 
distress. Knowing what had happened, he ran 
back. Within the pasture the hound, only his hind 
feetTouching the ground, was struggling and pawing 
at the fence. He had jumped, the block had caught 
and was hanging him. Davy rushed to him. 
Breathing fast, he unsnapped the chain. The block 
and chain fell on the other side of the fence and the 
dog was free. Shrewdly the boy looked back up 
the road; the woods hid the old man’s house from 
view and no one was to be seen. With a little 
grin of triumph he turned and broke into a run down 


170 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

the pasture hill toward the pines, the wind blowing 
gloriously into his face, the dog galloping beside him. 

Still running, the two came out into the road that 
led home, and suddenly Davy stopped short and 
his face flushed. Yonder around the bend on his 
gray mare jogged Squire Kirby toward them, his 
pipe in his mouth, his white beard stuck cozily in- 
side the bosom of his big overcoat. There was no 
use to run, no use to try to make the dog hide, no 
use to try to hide himself — the old man had seen 
them both. Suppose he knew whose dog this was! 
Heart pounding, Davy waited beside the road. 

Mr. Kirby drew rein opposite them and looked 
down with eyes that twinkled under his bushy 
white brows. He always stopped to ask the boy 
how his mother was and how they were getting 
along. Davy had been to his house many a time 
with eggs and chickens to sell, or with a load of 
seasoned oak wood. Many a time he had warmed 
himself before Mr. Kirby’s fire in the big living 
room and bedroom combined, and eaten Mrs. Kirby’s 
fine white cake covered with frosting. Never before 
had he felt ill at ease in the presence of the kindly 
old man. 

“ That’s a genuine hound you got there, son, ain’t 
it?” 

“Yes, sir,” said Davy. 

“Good for rabbits an’ ’possums an’ coons, eh?” 

“He shore is!” 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 171 

“Well, next big fat ’possum you an’ him ketch, 
you bring that ’possum ’round an’ me an’ you’ll 
talk business. Maybe we’ll strike a bargain. Got 
any good sweet potatoes? Well, you bring four or 
five bushels along to eat that ’possum with. Haulin’ 
any wood these days? Bring me a load or two of 
good, dry oak — pick it out, son, hear? How’s your 
ma? All right? That’s good. Here ” 

He reached deep down in a pocket of his enormous 
faded overcoat, brought out two red apples, and 
leaned down out of his saddle which creaked under 
the strain of his weight. 

“Try one of ’em yourself an’ take one of ’em 
home to your ma. Git up, Mag!” 

He jogged on down the road, and the boy, sobered, 
walked on. One thing was certain, though, Mr. 
Kirby hadn’t known whose dog this was. What 
difference did it make, anyhow? He hadn’t stolen 
anything. He couldn’t let a dog choke to death 
before his eyes. What did Old Man Thorny croft 
care about a dog, anyhow, the hard-hearted old 
skinflint! 

He remembered the trouble his mother had had 
when his father died and Old Man Thornycroft 
pushed her for a note he had given. He had heard 
people talk about it at the time, and he remembered 
how white his mother’s face had been. Old Man 
Thornycroft had refused to wait, and his mother had 
had to sell five acres of the best land on the little 


172 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


farm to pay the note. It was after the sale that 
Mr. Kirby, who lived five miles away, had ridden 
over. 

“Why didn’t you let me know, Mrs. Allen?” he 
had demanded. “Or Steve Earle? Either one of 
us would have loaned you the money — gladly, 
gladly!” He had risen from the fire and pulled 
on the same overcoat he wore now. It was faded 
then, and that was two years ago. 

It was sunset when Davy reached home to find 
his mother out in the clean-swept yard picking up 
chips in her apron. From the bedroom window of 
the little one-storied unpainted house came a bright 
red glow, and from the kitchen the smell of cooking 
meat. His mother straightened up from her task 
with a smile when with his new-found partner he 
entered the yard. 

“Why, Davy,” she asked, “where did you get 
him?” 

“He — he just followed me, Ma.” 

“But whose dog is he?” 

“He’s mine, Ma — he just took up with me.” 

“Where, Davy?” 

“Oh, way back down the road — in a pasture.” 

“He must belong to somebody.” 

“He’s just a oY hound dog, Ma, that’s all he is. 
Lots of hounds don’t belong to nobody — everybody 
knows that, Ma. Look at him, Ma. Mighty nigh 
starved to death. Lemme keep him. We can 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHER’S STORE 173 

feed him on scraps. He can sleep under the house. 
Me an’ him will keep you in rabbits. You won’t 
have to kill no more chickens. Nobody don’t want 
him but me!” 

From her gaunt height she looked down into the 
boy’s eager eyes, then at the dog beside him. “All 
right, son,” she said. “If he don’t belong to any- 
body.” 

That night Davy alternately whistled and talked 
to the dog beside him as he husked the corn he had 
raised with his own hands, and chopped the wood he 
had cut and hauled — for since his father’s death he 
had kept things going. He ate supper in a sort of 
haze; he hurried out with a tin plate of scraps; he 
fed the grateful, hungry dog on the kitchen steps. 
He begged some vaseline from his mother and 
rubbed it on the sore neck. Then he got two or 
three empty gunny sacks out of the corncrib, crawled 
under the house to a warm place beside the chimney, 
and spread them out for a bed. He went into the 
house whistling; he didn’t hear a word of the chap- 
ter his mother read out of the Bible. Before he went 
to bed in the shed-room he raised the window. 

“You all right, old feller?” he called. 

Underneath the house he heard the responsive 
tap-tap of a tail in the dry dust. He climbed out 
of his clothes, leaving them in a pile in the middle 
of the floor, tumbled into bed, and pulled the covers 
high over him. 


174 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“ Golly !” he said. “Oh, golly!” 

Next day he hunted till sundown. The Christ- 
mas holidays were on and there was no thought of 
school. He went only now and then, anyway, for 
since his father’s death there was too much for him 
to do at home. He hunted in the opposite direction 
from Old Man Thornvcroft’s. It was three miles 
away; barriers of woods and bottoms and hills lay 
between, and the old man seldom stirred beyond the 
boundaries of his own farm; but Davy wanted to be 
on the safe side. 

There were moments, though, when he thought 
of the old man and wondered if he had missed the 
dog and whether he would make any search for 
him. There were sober moments, too, when he 
thought of his mother and Mr. Kirby and wished 
he had told them the truth. But then the long- 
drawn bay of the hound would come from the 
bottoms ahead, and he would hurry to the summons, 
his face flushed and eager. The music of the dog 
running, the sound of the shots, and his own tri- 
umphant yells started many an echo among the 
silent, frosted hills that day. He came home with 
enough meat to last a week — six rabbits. As he 
hurried into the yard he held them up for the in- 
spection of his mother, who was feeding the chickens. 

“He’s the finest rabbit dog ever was, Ma! Oh, 
golly, he can follow a trail! I never see anything 
like it, Ma, I never did! I’ll skin ’em an’ clean ’em 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 175 

after supper. You ought to have saw him, Ma! 
Golly!” 

And while he chopped the wood, and milked the 
cow, and fed the mule, and skinned the rabbits, he 
saw other days ahead like this, and whistled and 
sang and talked to the hound, who followed close at 
his heels every step he took. 

Then one afternoon, while he was patching the 
lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the wood- 
pile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy recognized 
his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He 
quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him, and 
got behind the house where he could see without 
being seen. The buggy stopped in the road, and 
the old man, his hard, pinched face working, his 
buggy whip in his hand, came down the walk and 
called Mrs. Allen out on the porch. 

“I just come to tell you,” he cried, “that your 
boy Davy run off with my dog las’ Friday evenin’! 
There ain’t no use to deny it. I know all about it. 
I seen him when he passed in front of the house. I 
found the block I had chained to the dog beside the 
road. I heered Squire Jim Kirby talkin’ to some 
men in Tom Belcher’s sto’ this very mornin’; just 
happened to overhear him as I come in. ‘A boy 
an’ a dog,’ he says, ‘is the happiest combination in 
nater.’ Then he went on to tell about your boy 
an’ a tan dog. He had met ’em in the road. Met 
’em when? Last Friday evenin’. Oh, there ain’t 


176 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


no use to deny it, Mrs. Allen! Your boy Davy — 
he stole my dog!” 

“Mr. Thornycroft” — Davy could not see his 
mother, but he could hear her voice tremble — “he 
did not know whose dog it was!” 

“He didn’t? He didn’t?” yelled the old man. 
“An’ him a boy that knows ever’ dog for ten miles 
around! Right in front of my house, I tell you — 
that’s where he picked him up — that’s where he 
tolled him off! Didn’t I tell you, woman, I seen 
him pass? Didn’t I tell you I found the block down 
the road? Didn’t know whose dog it was? Ri- 
diculous, ridiculous! Call him, ask him, face him 
with it. Likely he’ll lie — but you’ll see his face. 
Call him, that’s all I ask. Call him!” 

“ Davy ! ” called Mrs. Allen. “ Davy ! ” 

Just a moment the boy hesitated. Then he went 
around the house. The hound stuck very close to 
him, eyes full of terror, tail tucked as he looked at 
the old man. 

“There he is — with my dog!" cried the old man. 
“You didn’t know whose dog it was, did you, son? 
Eh? You didn’t know, now, did you?” 

“Yes!” cried the boy. “I knowed!” 

“Hear that, Mrs. Allen? Did he know? What 
do you say now? He stole my dog, didn’t he? 
That’s what he done, didn’t he? Answer me, wo- 
man! You come here!” he yelled, his face livid, 
and started, whip raised, toward boy and dog. 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 177 


There were some smooth white stones the size of 
hen eggs arranged around a flower bed in the yard, 
and Davy stood near these stones — and now, quick 
as a flash, he stooped down and picked one up. 

“You stop!” he panted, his face very white. 

His mother cried out and came running toward 
him, but Thornycroft had stopped. No man in 
his right mind wants to advance on a country boy 
with a rock. Goliath tried it once. 

*A11 right!” screamed the old man. “You 
steal first — then you try to assault an old man! I 
didn’t come here to raise no row. I just come 
here to warn you, Mrs. Allen. I’ll have the law on 
that boy — I’ll have the law on him before another 
sun sets!” 

He turned and hurried toward the buggy. Davy 
dropped the rock. Mrs. Allen stood looking at the 
old miser, who was clambering into his buggy, with 
a sort of horror. Then she ran toward the boy. 

“Oh, Davy! run after him. Take the dog to 
him. He’s terrible, Davy, terrible! Run after 
him — anything — anything ! ” 

But the boy looked up at her with grim mouth 
and hard eyes. 

“I ain’t a-goin’ to do it, Ma!” he said. 

It was after supper that very night that the 
summons came. Bob Kelley, rural policeman, 
brought it. 

“Me an’ Squire Kirby went to Greenville this 


178 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

mornin’,” he said, “to look up some things about 
court in the mornin\ This evenin’ we run into 
Old Man Thorny croft on the street, lookin’ for us. 
He was awful excited. He had been to Mr. Kirby’s 
house, an’ found out Mr. Kirby was in town, an’ 
followed us. He wanted a warrant swore out 
right there. Mr. Kirby tried to argue with him, but 
it warn’t no use. So at last Mr. Kirby turned to 
me. ‘You go on back, Bob,’ he said. ‘This’ll give 
me some more lookin’ up to do. Tell my wife I’ll 
just spend the night with Judge Fowler, an’ git back 
in time for court in Belcher’s sto’ in the mornin’. 
An’, Bob, you just stop by Mrs. Allen’s — she’s 
guardian of the boy — an’ tell her I say to bring him 
to Belcher’s sto’ to-morrow mornin’ at nine.* You 
be there, too, Mr. Thornycroft — an’, by the way, 
bring that block of wood you been talkin’ about.’ ” 

That was all the squire had said, declared the 
rural policeman. No, he hadn’t sent any other 
message — just said he would read up on the case. 
The rural policeman went out and closed the door 
behind him. It had been informal, haphazard, 
like the life of the community in which they lived. 
But, for all that, the law had knocked at the door 
of the Widow Allen and left a white-faced mother 
and a bewildered boy behind. 

They tried to resume their usual employments. 
Mrs. Allen sat down beside the table, picked up her 
sewing and put her glasses on, but her hands trem- 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 179 

bled when she tried to thread the needle. Davy 
sat on a split-bottom chair in the corner, his feet 
up on the rungs, and tried to be still; but his heart 
was pounding fast and there was a lump in his 
throat. Presently he got up and went out of doors, 
to get in some kindling on the back porch before 
it snowed, he told his mother. But he went be- 
cause he couldn’t sit there any longer, because he 
was about to explode with rage and grief and fear 
and bitterness. 

He did not go toward the woodpile — what dif- 
ference did dry kindling make now? At the side 
of the house he stooped down and softly called 
Buck. The hound came to him, wriggling along 
under the beams, and he leaned against the house 
and lovingly pulled the briar-torn ears. A long 
time he stayed there, feeling on his face already the 
fine mist of snow. To-morrow the ground would 
be white; it didn’t snow often in that country; day 
after to-morrow everybody would hunt rabbits — 
everybody but him and Buck. 

It was snowing hard when at last he went back 
into the warm room, so warm that he pulled off 
his coat. Once more he tried to sit still in the split- 
bottom chair. But there is no rage that consumes 
like the rage of a boy. In its presence he is so help- 
less ! If he were a man, thought Davy, he would go 
to Old Man Thornycroft’s house this night, call 
him out, and thrash him in the road. If he were a 


180 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


man, he would curse, he would do something. He 
looked wildly about the room, the hopelessness of 
it all coming over him in a wave. Then suddenly, 
because he wasn’t a man, because he couldn’t do what 
he wanted to do, he began to cry, not as a boy cries, 
but more as a man cries, in shame and bitterness, 
his shoulders shaken by great convulsive sobs, his 
head buried in his hands, his fingers running through 
his tangled mop of hair. 

“Davy, Davy!” The sewing and the scissors 
slipped to the floor. His mother was down on her 
knees beside him, one arm about his shoulders, try- 
ing to look into his eyes. “You’re my man, Davy! 
You’re the only man, the only help I’ve got. You’re 
my life, Davy. Poor boy ! Poor child ! ” 

He caught hold of her convulsively, and she 
pressed his head against her breast. Then he saw 
that she was crying, and he grew quiet, and wiped 
his eyes with his ragged sleeve. 

“I’m all right now, Ma,” he said; but he looked 
at her wildly. 

She did not follow him into his little unceiled 
bedroom. She must have known that he had 
reached that age where no woman could help him. 
It must be a man now to whom he could pin his 
faith. And while he lay awake, tumbling and toss- 
ing, along with bitter thoughts of Old Man Thorny- 
croft came other bitter thoughts of Mr. Kirby, whom, 
deep down in his boy’s heart, he had worshipped 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 181 


— Mr. Kirby, who had sided with Old Man Thor- 
nycroft and sent a summons with — no message 
for him. “God!” he said. “God!” And pulled his 
hair, down there under the covers; and he hated the 
law that would take a dog from him and give it back 
to that old man — the law that Mr. Kirby represented. 

It was still snowing when next morning he and 
his mother drove out of the yard and he turned the 
head of the reluctant old mule in the direction of 
Belcher’s store. A bitter wind cut their faces, but 
it was not as bitter as the heart of the boy. Only 
twice on that five-mile ride did he speak. The first 
time was when he looked back to find Buck, whom 
they had left at home, thinking he would stay under 
the house on such a day, following very close behind 
the buggy. 

“Might as well let him come on,” said the boy. 

The second time was when they came in sight of 
Belcher’s store, dim yonder through the swirling 
snow. Then he looked up into his mother’s face. 

“Ma,” he said grimly, “I ain’t no thief!” 

She smiled as bravely as she could with her stiff- 
ened face and with the tears so near the surface. 
She told him that she knew it, and that everybody 
knew it. But there was no answering smile on the 
boy’s set face. 

The squire’s gray mare, standing huddled up in 
the midst of other horses and of buggies under the 
shed near the store, told that court had probably 


182 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

already convened. Hands numb, the boy hitched 
the old mule to the only rack left under the shed, 
then made Buck lie down under the buggy. Heart 
pounding, he went up on the store porch with his 
mother and pushed the door open. 

There was a commotion when they entered. The 
men, standing about the pot-bellied stove, their 
overcoats steaming, made way for them. Old 
Man Thornycroft looked quickly and triumphantly 
around. In the rear of the store the squire rose from 
a table, in front of which was a cleared space. 

“Pull up a chair nigh the stove for Mrs. Allen, 
Tom Belcher,” he said. “I’m busy tryin’ this 
chicken-stealin’ nigger. When I get through, Mrs. 
Allen, if you’re ready, I’ll call your case.” 

Davy stood beside his mother while the trial of 
the Negro proceeded. Some of the fight had left 
him now, crowded down here among all these grown 
men, and especially in the presence of Mr. Kirby, 
for it is hard for a boy to be bitter long. But with 
growing anxiety he heard the sharp questions the 
magistrate asked the Negro; he saw the frown of 
justice; he heard the sentence — “sixty days on the 
gang.” And the Negro had stolen only a chicken — 
and he had run off with another man’s dog. 

“The old man’s rough this mornin’,” Jim Taylor 
whispered to another man above him; and he saw 
the furtive grin on the face of Old Man Thorny- 
croft, who leaned against the counter, waiting. 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 183 


His heart jumped into his mouth when after a 
silence the magistrate spoke: “Mr. Thornycroft, 
step forward, sir. Put your hand on the book here. 
Now tell us about that dog of yours that was stole.” 

Looking first at the magistrate, then at the crowd 
as if to impress them also, the old man told in a 
high-pitched, excited voice all the details — his seeing 
Davy Allen pass in front of his house last Friday after- 
noon, his missing the dog, his finding the block of wood 
down the road beside the pasture fence, his over- 
hearing the squire’s talk right here in the store, his 
calling on Mrs. Allen, the boy’s threatening him. 

“I tell you,” he cried, “that’s a dangerous char- 
acter — that boy!” 

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” asked the squire. 

“It’s enough, ain’t it?” demanded Thornycroft 
angrily. 

The squire nodded and spat into the cuspidor 
between his feet. “I think so,” he said quietly. 
“Stand aside. Davy Allen, step forward. Put 
your hand on the book here, son. Davy, how old 
are you?” 

The boy gulped. “Thirteen year old, goin* 
on fo’teen.” 

“You’re old enough, son, to know the nater of 
the oath you’re about to take. For over two years 
you’ve been the main-stay an’ support of your 
mother. You’ve had to carry the burdens and 
responsibilities of a man, Davy. The testimony 


184 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

you give in this case will be the truth, the whole 
truth, an’ nothin’ but the truth, so help you God. 
What about it?” 

Davy nodded, his face very white. 

“All right now. Tell us about it. Talk loud so 
we can hear — all of us.” 

The boy’s eyes never left Mr. Kirby’s while he 
talked. Something in them held him, fascinated 
him, overawed him. Very large and imposing he 
looked there behind his little table, with his faded 
old overcoat on, and there was no sound in the room 
but the boy’s clear voice. 

“An’ you come off an’ left the dog at first?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“An’ you didn’t unfasten the chain from the block 
till the dog got caught in the fence?” 

“No, sir, I didn’t.” 

“Did you try to get him to follow you then?” 

“No, sir, he wanted to.” 

“Ask him, Mr. Kirby,” broke in Thornycroft 
angrily, “if he tried to drive him home!” 

“I’ll ask him whatever seems fit an’ right to me, 
sir,” said Mr. Kirby. “What did you tell your 
ma, Davy, when you got home?” 

“I told her he followed me.” 

“Did you tell her whose dog he was?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Ain’t that what you ought to have done? Ain’t 
it?” 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 185 

Davy hesitated. “Yes, sir.” 

There was a slight shuffling movement among the 
men crowded about. Somebody cleared his throat. 
Mr. Kirby resumed : 

“This block you been tellin’ about — how was 
it fastened to the dog?” 

“There was a chain fastened to the block by 
a staple. The other end was fastened to the 
collar.” 

“How heavy do you think that block was?” 

“About ten pound, I reckon.” 

“Five,” broke in Old Man Thornycroft with a 
sneer. 

Mr. Kirby turned to him. “You fetched it with 
you, didn’t you? I told you to. It’s evidence. 
Bob Kelley, go out to Mr. Thornycroft’s buggy an’ 
bring that block of wood into court.” 

The room was silent while the rural policeman was 
gone. Davy still stood in the cleared space before 
Mr. Kirby, his ragged overcoat on, his tattered hat 
in his hand, breathing fast, afraid to look at his 
mother. Everybody turned when Kelley came in 
with the block of wood. Everybody craned their 
necks to watch while, at the magistrate’s order, 
Kelley weighed the block of wood on the store scales, 
which he put on the magistrate’s table. 

“Fo’teen punds,” said Mr. Kirby. “Take the 
scales away.” 

“It had rubbed all the skin off’n the dog’s neck,” 


186 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

broke in Davy impulsively. “It was all raw an’ 
bleedin’.” 

“Aw, that ain’t so!” cried Thornycroft. 

“Is the dog out there?” asked Mr. Kirby. 

“Yes, sir, under the buggy.” 

“Bob Kelley, you go out an’ bring that dog into 
court.” 

The rural policeman went out, and came back 
with the hound, who looked eagerly up from one face 
to the other, then, seeing Davy, came to him and 
stood against him, still looking around with that 
expression of melancholy on his face that a hound 
dog always wears except when he is in action. 

“Bring the dog here, son!” commanded Mr. 
Kirby. He examined the raw place on the neck. 
“Any of you gentlemen care to take a look?” he 
asked. 

“It was worse’n that,” declared Davy, “till I 
rubbed vase-leen on it.” 

Old Man Thornycroft pushed forward, face quiv- 
ering. “What’s all this got to do with that boy 
stealin’ that dog?” he demanded. “That’s what 
I want to know — what’s it got to do?” 

“Mr. Thornycroft,” said Kirby, “at nine o’clock 
this mornin’ this place ceased to be Tom Belcher’s 
sto’, an’ become a court of justice. Some things 
are seemly in a court, some not. You stand back 
there!” 

The old man stepped back to the counter, and 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 187 

stood pulling his chin, his eyes running over the 
crowd of faces. 

“Davy Allen,” spoke Mr. Kirby, “you stand back 
there with your ma. Tom Belcher, make way for 
him. And, Tom, s’pose you put another stick of 
wood in that stove an’ poke up the fire.” He took 
off his glasses, blew on them, polished them with 
his handkerchief and readjusted them. Then, lean- 
ing back in his chair, he spoke. 

“Gentlemen, from the beginnin’ of time, as fur 
back as records go, a dog’s been the friend, com- 
panion, an’ protector of man. Folks say he come 
from the wolf, but that ain’t no reflection on him, 
seein’ that we come from monkeys ourselves; an’ 
I believe, takin’ all things into account, I’d as soon 
have a wolf for a ancestor as a monkey, an’ a little 
ruther. 

“Last night in the liberry of my old friend Judge 
Fowler in Greenville, I looked up some things about 
this dog question. I find that there have been some 
queer decisions handed down by the courts, showin’ 
that the law does recognize the fact that a dog is 
different from other four-footed critters. For in- 
stance, it has been held that a dog has a right to pro- 
tect not only his life but his dignity; that where a 
man worries a dog beyond what would be reasonable 
to expect any self-respectin’ critter to stand, that 
dog has a right to bite that man, an’ that man can’t 
collect any damages — provided the bitin’ is done 


188 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


at the time of the worryin’ an’ in sudden heat an’ 
passion. That has been held in the courts, gentle- 
men. The law that holds for man holds for dogs. 

“Another thing: If the engineer of a railroad 
train sees a cow or a horse or a sheep on the track, 
or a hog, he must stop the train or the road is liable 
for any damage done ’em. But if he sees a man 
walkin’ along the track, he has a right to presume 
that the man, bein’ a critter of more or less intel- 
ligence, will git off, an’ he is not called on to stop 
under ordinary circumstances. The same thing 
holds true of a dog. The engineer has a right to 
presume that the dog, bein’ a critter of intelligence, 
will get off the track. Here again the law is the 
same for dog an’ man. 

“But — if the engineer has reason to believe that 
the man’s mind is took up with some object of an 
engrossin’ nater, he is supposed to stop the train 
till the man comes to himself an’ looks around. 
The same thing holds true of a dog. If the engi- 
neer has reason to suspect that the dog’s mind is 
occupied with some engrossin’ topic, he must stop 
the train. That case has been tested in this very 
state, where a dog was on the track settin’ a covey 
of birds in the adjoinin’ field. The railroad was 
held responsible for the death of that dog, because 
the engineer ought to have known by the action of 
the dog that his mind was on somethin’ else beside 
railroad trains an’ locomotives.” 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHER'S STORE 189 


Again the magistrate spat into the cuspidor be- 
tween his feet. Davy, still watching him, felt his 
mother’s grip on his arm. Everyone was listening 
so closely that the whispered sneering comment of 
Old Man Thornycroft to the man next to him was 
audible, “What’s all this got to do with the case?” 

“The p’int I’m gettin’ to is this,” went on Mr. 
Kirby, not paying attention to him: “a dog is not 
like a cow or a horse or any four-footed critter. 
He’s a individual, an’ so the courts have held him 
in spirit if not in actual words. Now this court of 
mine here in Tom Belcher’s sto’ ain’t like other 
courts. I have to do the decidin’ myself; I have 
to interpret the true spirit of the law without tech- 
nicalities an’ quibbles such as becloud it in other an’ 
higher courts. An’ I hold that since a dog is de 
facto an’ de jury an individual, he has a right to 
life, liberty, an’ the pursuit of happiness. 

“Therefore, gentlemen, I hold that that hound 
dog. Buck, had a perfect right to follow that boy, 
Davy Allen, there; an’ I hold that Davy Allen was 
not called on to drive that dog back, or interfere in 
any way with that dog followin’ him if the dog so 
chose. You’ve heard the evidence of the boy. You 
know, an’ I know, he has spoke the truth this day, 
an’ there ain’t no evidence to the contrary. The 
boy did not entice the dog. He even went down the 
road, leavin’ him behind. He run back only when 
the dog was in dire need an’ chokin’ to death. He 


190 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

wasn’t called on to put that block an’ chain back 
on the dog. He couldn’t help it if the dog followed 
him. He no more stole that dog than I stole him. 
He’s no more of a thief than I am. I dismiss this 
case, Mr. Thornycroft, this case you’ve brought 
against Davy Allen. I declare him innocent of the 
charge of theft. I set it down right here on the 
records of this court.” 

“Davy!” gasped Mrs. Allen. “Davy!” 

But, face working, eyes blazing, Old Man Thorny- 
croft started forward, and the dog, panting, shrank 
between boy and mother. “Jim Kirby!” cried 
the old man, stopping for a moment in the cleared 
space. “You’re magistrate. What you say goes. 
But that dog thar — he’s mine! He’s my property 
— mine by law!” He jerked a piece of rope out of 
his overcoat pocket and came on toward the cower- 
ing dog. “Tom Belcher, Bob Kelley! Stop that 
dog! He’s mine!” 

“Davy!” Mrs. Allen was holding the boy. 
“Don’t — don’t say anything. You’re free to go 
home. Your record’s clear. The dog’s his!” 

“Hold on!” Mr. Kirby had risen from his chair. 
“You come back here, Mr. Thornycroft. This 
court’s not adjourned yet. If you don’t get back, 
I’ll stick a fine to you for contempt you’ll remember 
the rest of your days. You stand where you are, 
sir! Right there! Don’t move till I’m through!” 

Quivering, the old man stood where he was. 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHERS STORE 191 


Mr. Kirby sat down, face flushed, eyes blazing. 
“Punch up that fire, Tom Belcher,” he said. “I 
ain’t through yet.” 

The hound came tremblingly back to Davy, looked 
up in his face, licked his hand, then sat down at his 
side opposite his former master, looking around now 
and then at the old man, terror in his eyes. In the 
midst of a deathly silence the magistrate resumed. 

“What I was goin’ to say, gentlemen, is this: 
I’m not only magistrate, I’m an officer in an organi- 
zation that you country fellers likely don’t know of, 
an organization known as the Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals. As such an officer 
it’s my duty to report an’ bring to trial any man who 
treats a dumb brute in a cruel an’ inhuman way. 
Mr. Thornycroft, judgin’ by the looks of that houn’, 
you ain’t give him enough to eat to keep a cat alive 
— an’ a cat, we all know, don’t eat much, just messes 
over her vittles. You condemned that po’ beast, 
for no fault of his own, to the life of a felon. A 
houn’ ain’t happy at best, he’s melancholy; an’ a 
houn’ that ain’t allowed to run free is of all critters 
the wretchedest. This houn’s neck is rubbed raw. 
God only knows what he’s suffered in mind an* 
body. A man that would treat a dog that way ain’t 
fitten to own one. An’ I hereby notify you that, 
on the evidence of this boy, an’ the evidence before 
our eyes, I will indict you for breakin’ the law re- 
gardin’ the treatment of animals; an’ I notify you, 


192 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


furthermore, that as magistrate I’ll put the law on 
you for that same thing. An’ it might be interestin’ 
to you to know, sir, that I can fine you as much as 
five hundred dollars, or send you to jail for one year, 
or both, if I see fit — an’ there ain’t no tellin’ but 
what I will see fit, sir.” 

He looked sternly at Thornycroft. 

“Now I’m goin’ to make a proposition that I ad- 
vise you to jump at like you never jumped at any- 
thing before. If you will give up that houn’ Buck 
— to me, say, or to anybody I decide will be kind to 
him — I will let the matter drop. If you will go 
home like a peaceable citizen, you won’t hear no 
more about it from me; but if you don’t ” 

“Git out of my way!” cried Old Man Thornycroft. 
“All of you! I’m goin’ — I’m goin’!” 

“Hold on!” said Mr. Kirby, when he had got al- 
most to the door. “Do you, in the presence of 
these witnesses, turn over this dog to me, relinquishin’ 
all claims to him, on the conditions named? Answer. 
Yes or No?” 

There was a moment’s silence; then the old man 
cried out: 

“Take the old hound! He ain’t wuth the salt in 
his vittles!” 

He jerked the door open. 

“Yes, or no?” called Mr. Kirby inexorably. 

“Yes!” yelled the old man, and slammed the 
door behind him. 


TRIAL IN TOM BELCHER'S STORE 193 


“One minute, gentlemen,” said Mr. Kirby, rising 
from the table and gathering his papers and records 
together. “Just one more thing: If anybody here 
has any evidence, or knows of any, tendin’ to show 
that this boy Davy Allen is not the proper person 
to turn over a houn’ dog to, I hope he will speak 
up.” He waited a moment. “In the absence of 
any objections, an’ considerin’ the evidence that’s 
been given here this momin’, I think I’ll just let 
that dog go back the way he come. Thank you, 
gentlemen. Court’s adjourned ! ” 


IX 


THE PURSUIT 

YCLONE BILL SIMMONS, burly, bard. 



and crimson of face, turned an overheated 


runabout out of the blazing highway and 
into a grove of oaks where stood the convict camp. 

“All right,” he said. “Get out.” 

Tom Abercrombie, face drawn, hands manacled, 
clambered out of the car. He was a man of sixty 
or thereabout, long, lank, wiry, with a white patri- 
archal beard and white beetling brows. His cheap 
suit of black and his black slouch hat were covered 
with dust. 

“This way,” ordered Simmons. 

As if he did not hear, the old man glanced about 
him: at the long, weather-stained tent, open at 
both ends and at the sides, and showing within two 
rows of untidy bunks; at the smaller tents that 
formed a hollow square; at the shed for mules 
deeper within the grove; at the small group of 
Negro convicts — cooks and trusties — who from near 
the big tent stared curiously at him. 

“This way,” repeated Simmons harshly. 


194 


195 


THE PURSUIT 

The lean cheeks flushed. The old man looked 
quickly at Simmons, who during the twenty-mile 
drive from the county seat had not spoken a word 
to him. Then, head bowed, he followed the man 
toward one of the smaller tents. 

It was plainly the guard tent; it stood at the 
entrance to the camp, where a path turned in 
from the road. In front, under the shade of an 
oak, were two or three splint-bottom chairs. And 
chained to the oak by a staple driven into the trunk, 
drowsing in the heat of the summer mid-after- 
noon, lay a bloodhound. 

He had barely looked up when the car drove in. 
His heavy black body with its tan belly and legs 
was completely relaxed, and he was panting slightly. 
His head, which he held up as with an effort, was 
massive, leonine, rugged, with chops and dewlaps 
that hung loosely down, giving the impression 
of a detached and judicial attitude toward life. 
His expression was grave, thoughtful, melancholy, 
as if his ancestors, pondering through the centuries 
on the frailty of humanity as they saw it, had set 
their indelible stamp of gloom and sorrow on his 
face. Toward him the burly guard and the tall 
bearded prisoner made their way. 

There are men to whom no dog can be insensible; 
men with a secret quality of magnetism or under- 
standing which makes any dog, at their approach, 
look up. When Simmons passed the great hound did 


196 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

not stir; but when Tom Abercrombie came opposite 
him, he lifted his muzzle, grizzled with age, and his 
melancholy, amber-coloured eyes met the man’s. 

The old man stopped. It was as if he had found, 
in all this strangeness, a friend. He spoke before 
he thought — half under his breath. 

“Old Whiskers,” he said gently. “Old Gray 
Whiskers.” 

Simmons turned in a flash, his face suddenly 
more crimson than ever, his eyes blazing. 

“What did you say to that dog?” he yelled. 

The old man looked at him steadily but did not 
reply. 

“Now here!” The guard’s voice rang out in the 
grove. “I know you, Abercrombie, and I know 
your game, you bloody, long-whiskered, knife-totin’ 
throat-cutter. You are tryin’ to make friends with 
that dog!” 

He went to a near-by bush, got out his knife, and 
cut a heavy switch. 

“Take this,” he commanded. “Oh, you can 
catch hold of it ! Catch it with both hands. Never 
mind the bracelets. Take it. Hit that dog. Hit 
him ! ” 

The dreamlike state in which the old man had 
been wandering dissolved. His eyes narrowed to 
mere slits behind the beetling brows. The cold 
steel of the mountaineer, the mountaineer who 
weighs his words, was in the slow-drawled reply: 


THE PURSUIT 


197 


“Wal, now, I reckon I won’t.” 

A moment they faced one another, Simmons’ 
eyes murderous. Some fear of an investigation if 
he struck the old man, something daunting, too, that 
he saw in the mountaineer’s eyes, restrained him. 

“Abercrombie,” he said, and moistened his lips 
with his tongue, “I brought out in that car three 
boxes of shotgun shells — buckshot — extra heavy 
loaded. Get me?” 

Such was the initiation of old Tom Abercrombie 
as a convict. That afternoon he was entered on 
the books as a “dangerous” prisoner; that night he 
lay on an iron cot, staring up at the roof of a 
solitary tent, which, according to law, had to be 
provided for him. On his ankles were locked two 
steel anklets connected by a chain eighteen inches 
long. This chain, in turn, was locked to the cot. 

Shame lay with him as he stared upward — shame 
and a terrible loneliness and dread of the future. 
At sunset he had watched a long line of shackled 
Negroes, followed by guards with shotguns, file into 
camp. To-morrow he himself would be one of that 
gang; and not only to-morrow, but for two years. 
Assault and Battery with Intent to Kill — this was 
the verdict of the court in Greenville in which he 
had been tried. And yet he hadn’t intended to 
kill anybody, he had only meant to remonstrate. 

Three young fellows, sitting at a table in a cheap 
ice-cream parlour — it had seemed a crystal palace 


198 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

to the old man and to Molly his wife, fresh from the 
deepest recesses of the mountains — had made fun 
of Molly and her sunbonnet. 

When they did that, the mirrors that lined the 
walls, the enamelled-top tables, the sunlit street 
showing through wide-open doors, had all turned 
red before his eyes. He had risen from his chair and 
gone toward this seat of the scornful. “You fel- 
lers,” he had warned in a low voice, “you fellers 
don’t want to say anything like that again.” 

They had looked at him in sullen astonishment; 
then they had sprung to their feet. According to 
the testimony they gave in court, he had confronted 
one of them, an open knife hidden up his sleeve. 
This was not true, and he denied it stoutly on the 
stand. As a matter of fact, he had not thought of 
his knife until the three young bruisers, habitues of 
the place and of the questionable pool-room in the 
rear, rushed him all together, and a dirty-aproned 
waiter, coming up from behind, hit him a crack that 
jarred his skull. Then he had sprung back and 
drawn his knife. 

The wounds he inflicted were not serious, he had 
simply held his assailants off ; but the policeman who 
ran in, followed by a crowd, found the knife in his 
hand. The testimony was against him; besides, he 
did not make a good witness. No man does who 
holds something back. And what old Tom held 
back was the remark the young men had made. 


THE PURSUIT 


199 


On that point his lips were stubbornly sealed. 
He did not even tell his lawyer. As for Molly, she 
had not heard. Poor girl, she was a bit deaf, her 
sunbonnet came down close over her ears, and she had 
been eating her ice cream, oblivious. He did not 
want her to know, ever. He did not want the court 
to hear. What’s more, he did not mean that it 
should hear. 

The courts of justice, like the mills of the gods, 
ought to grind slowly and grind exceeding small — 
sifting carefully the evidence, examining deeply 
into the character and motives of accuser and ac- 
cused. But the gods have eternity at their dis- 
posal, and their mills are run by unerring, self-ad- 
ministering laws, while the courts are sometimes 
harassed with a heavy docket that must be got 
through with and laws are made and administered 
by erring mortals. When they are overcrowded, 
there is inevitably, now and then, a victim. 

Hence old Tom Abercrombie, chained to a cot, 
staring up at the roof of a tent, oppressed with a 
terrible loneliness; thinking of a long double cabin 
in a mountain-girded valley, far over the Tennessee 
line, where he and Molly had lived forty years; of 
the cornfields in a creek bottom, of children and of 
grandchildren, of widely scattered neighbours and 
friends. 

Next day he was put to driving four mules hitched 
to a road scraper. Chains clanking, he had to climb 


200 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


as best he could into the iron seat. The humiliation 
of striped clothes he was spared; that barbarity 
had been done away with by law. He wore his 
black trousers, a blue shirt, and his broad-brimmed 
hat. Once on the seat no one passing along the road 
could see his shackles, but as if they were heated red- 
hot these symbols of shame burned into his flesh. 

In the road ahead and in the road behind Negro 
pickers and shovellers toiled away, watched over 
by guards with shotguns. He saw the eyes of 
these guards turn constantly toward him. “You 
want to watch that old devil,” Simmons had warned 
them. “He’s dangerous.” 

The days that followed were all alike: days of toil 
that began before sunrise, continued through blazing 
middays, and ended after sundown. Always, be- 
fore and behind, the gang picked and shovelled, al- 
ways the eyes of the guards were turning toward 
him. Always against the horizon the mountains, 
flecked at midday with clouds and shadows, beck- 
oned him like a mirage. 

Sometimes from the top of a hill, under his broad 
hat, he studied the lay of the land. In his mind he 
mapped out the water courses and the stretches of 
woodland that led with least open country to the 
mountains. Sometimes at night he dreamed of a 
double cabin in a cool mountain-girded valley. 

“You want to watch him,” warned Simmons 
again and again. 


THE PURSUIT 


201 


Once Molly came to see him. Simmons himself, 
at the guard tent, questioned her roughly, then 
shrugged his shoulders and let her pass. Through- 
out the interview, though, he sat over there by the 
guard tent, his eyes always on the two of them; and 
at his side, but never looking up at him, lay Sheriff, 
the bloodhound, panting. 

She told him how hard she had tried to get him 
off; how hard his friends had tried. They had been 
to see the solicitor, the sheriff, and finally the gover- 
nor himself. “They were all nice to me, Tom,” 
she declared; “but they say they can’t do nothin’. 
The governor talked to me a long time in his 
office. He asked all about us — where we lived, 
how many children we had, how it all happened. 
But he says he was elected to see the laws carried 
out, an’ can’t interfere. 

“We done everything we could,” she went on, 
“even the folks that live ’round here an’ have seen 
you workin’, po’ man, with the gang — even they 
tried to help. Squire Kirby an’ Mr. Earle, him that 
lives in that big white house they call Freedom 
Hill, up the road whar you been workin’, they 
headed the petition. They are the richest folks 
’round here. They heered the trial, Tom. They 
know you was set upon in that low-down place. 
Mr. Earle, he went to the capitol with me to see the 
governor. Him and the governor are ol’ friends. 
Mr. Earle, he bought my railroad ticket and paid 


202 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

my board in Greenville. He talked to the gov- 
ernor for over an hour. . . . But” — she shook 
her head — “it never done no good. 

“Here’s what folks say, though,” she whispered 
quickly. “If you got away back into Tennessee 
the law wouldn’t follow you. Mr. Earle, he told 
me that, just yistiddy, Tom. Squire Kirby he says 
the same thing. Tom, the sheriff hisself as good as 
told me. The governor wouldn’t requisition you, 
they all’s good as said. He wouldn’t, either, Tom. 
I know he wouldn’t.” 

Then her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, I 
wasn’t goin’ to tell you that!” she gasped. “Don’t 
try to get away. That man over yonder, he’ll kill 
you, Tom. Folks said he would — said he had killed 
two. I know he will, since I’ve seen him. He’s 
awful, awful!” 

She went on protesting, in terror that he would try 
to do the very thing she had suggested. She told 
him about the bloodhound. The newspaper men 
said he never lost a trail — that nobody who stayed on 
the ground had ever got away from him. 

“They know ever’thing, these newspaper men,” 
she went on. “They advised me right. Tom, two 
years ain’t long. We waited longer than that to 
get married. Remember, Tom? We ain’t old 
yet. . . . 

“Poor old gal,” said Tom. 

It was the sight of a dilapidated and deserted 


THE PURSUIT 


203 


blacksmith shop near the road they were widening, 
and of some rusted fragments of tools scattered 
about here and there, which caused old Tom, as the 
road-scraper passed and repassed the spot, to look 
very closely down into the upturned dirt. And it 
was the glimpse of something in that dirt which 
caused him suddenly to rein up the four mules and 
glance quickly in the direction of the two guards. 

It was an afternoon of terrific heat, following a 
prolonged drought. In the road ahead the gang of 
Negro convicts toiled silently, sluggishly, in the 
blinding glare. Simmons had driven off in the di- 
rection of Greenville an hour before. The two re- 
maining guards, with shotguns under their arms, 
stood in the scant shade of two dust-covered trees. 

“Jake,” said the old mountaineer calmly to the 
Negro on the machine behind him, the Negro who 
handled the levers, “Jake, there’s a bolt loose some- 
whar’ on this scrape. Reckon I better ’tend to it 
myself.” 

Without any apparent hurry, he clambered down 
from the seat. Quickly, secretly, he picked out of 
the upturned earth an object which he thrust into 
his shirt. Deliberately, as if encountering obstacles 
which caused him trouble, he hammered away at 
the supposed loose bolt. When at last he clambered 
back into the iron seat, heated like the top of a 
stove, there was just a slight flush on his lean cheeks 
and a brightness as of triumph in his deep-set eyes. 


204 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


On the way back to camp they passed Tom Bel- 
cher’s store. Here he asked permission of one of 
the guards (they were not all like Simmons) to go 
in and buy himself some tobacco. The guard who 
went in with him saw nothing suspicious in the 
fact that, along with the tobacco, the old man pur- 
chased also a package of chewing gum. 

That night he did not sleep. By raising up on 
his elbows in his cot he could see, in a chair tilted 
back against an oak tree, the night guard with a 
gun across his knees and, farther on, in front of the 
guard tent, the outline of the bloodhound asleep. 
Once, when he thought the guard nodded, he reached 
in his shirt. He got out the object he had picked 
up in the road and rubbed it against his shackles. 
The rasp of file on steel sounded loud in his tent like 
an alarm. He thought he saw the guard stir and 
the bloodhound lift his head. He lay silently down 
again. Later he punched a hole in the mattress 
and stuck the file deep into the straw. 

Next day he thought of Molly and home. As he 
sat on the road-scraper the mountains, purple and 
lofty against the sky, seemed now to be beckoning 
him. Once within them, once across the state line, 
the law would not follow him. He was satisfied of 
that from what Molly had told him. 

He bided his time until one stormy night when 
wind and rain drove the bloodhound within the 
shelter of the guard tent and, thrashing through the 


205 


TEE PURSUIT 

branches of the oaks and flapping the canvas of the 
big tent, drowned out to all ears but his own the 
rasp of a file on steel. Next day the continued 
rain made road work impossible, and as he hobbled 
back and forth to feed the mules, chewing gum hid 
two triangular cuts in his shackles. Again that 
night, storm and rain drowned out the sound that 
came from the tent where he sat hunched forward 
on his cot, sawing patiently and methodically away. 

Hours before dawn he slipped out of the rear of 
his tent and walked quickly toward the mule sheds, 
where he stood listening. Then, hat pulled down 
low, he hurried through the grove, across a field, 
and made for the black rim of the surrounding for- 
est. 

He could not have picked a better night had 
choice been given him. The rain, falling steadily, 
was washing his trail. It was the season of full 
moon and in spite of storm clouds the night was 
dimly luminous. He struck straight for the bot- 
toms and the creek, whose swollen turbulence 
sounded above the rain. He plunged into the 
water, which at the deepest places came no higher 
than his waist, and partly by feeling, partly by sight, 
now and then stumbling over boulders, now and then 
having to push aside thick underbrush, he made his 
way for something like two miles up-stream. 

Carefully he chose the spot where he left the 
creek. His eyes, grown accustomed to the night. 


206 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


picked out a tree that grew out of the ground at a 
distance from the bank, then bent over it. He 
caught hold of the branches, swung himself up, 
felt his way like an opossum along the trunk, swung 
to another tree, and did not touch ground until he 
was some hundred feet from the shore. 

An indistinct, dripping dawn that showed low- 
driving clouds found him, wet to the skin, like an old 
fox who has run all night, but confident, like one 
who has covered up all trace of a trail, making his 
steady way with long mountaineer’s stride across 
tangled bottoms, into stretches of woodland, over 
hills that grew ever steeper and higher, through 
undergrowth that grew ever denser. 

His face was very serious, but not anxious. His 
nerve was too cool, his courage too steady for him 
to feel any impulse to run. His lifelong experience 
as a hunter who travels far had taught him to save 
his energy. As the light of the gray day grew 
stronger he distinguished, at no great distance 
ahead, it seemed, the outlines of misty mountains. 
He recognized the gap where the highway crossed 
this first ridge into the recesses of the mountains, 
beyond the Tennessee line. On the night after to- 
morrow, he calculated, he could tramp up on his 
porch and Molly would open the door. 

Now and then, as twilight advanced, he stopped 
and listened. One of the guards, more kindly dis- 
posed than Simmons and the other guard, had, dur- 


THE PURSUIT 


207 


ing the hour of lunch one day, told him something 
about the bloodhound, Sheriff. The dog, he said, 
was not a full-bred bloodhound, his grandfather was 
a foxhound. Consequently, he ran a man freely, as 
a hound runs a fox, barking on the trail. 

He was hard to hold in, the guard had gone on to 
say, so hard that Simmons never tried to run him 
to the leash, but turned him loose to find the track 
himself. Then Simmons followed as fast as he could. 
No trouble to follow him. “You never heard such 
a voice as he’s got in your life,” the guard had 
added with a grin. “He usually puts a man up a 
tree inside two hours, and keeps him there till 
Simmons comes up. No danger of the man cornin’ 
down, either — not with that dog at the bottom of 
the tree.” 

And so, remembering these things, old Tom 
stopped now and then to listen. No sound but the 
steady dripping of rain from trees — no sound of 
pursuit. Miles lay between him and the camp, and 
still the rain was washing his trail. 

It was on top of a treeless hill that commanded 
the sights and sounds of the country for miles about 
that he stopped once more to listen— and his white hair 
stirred on his head, just as the hair of the old fox who 
has run all night might rise on his back. From far 
behind through the enveloping mists and over inter- 
vening hills, so far that at first he could not be sure, 
had come the bay of a solitary hound, trailing. 


208 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


He stood transfixed, his patriarchal beard drip- 
ping. Many a creature, fox and wolf, and man him- 
self, has through the centuries trembled at that 
sound. There was a silence during which he col- 
lected his wits, momentarily upset. Then again, 
faint and far away, like the ringing of a distant bell, 
came the sound. Miles between where he swung 
himself out of the creek and where he now stood the 
hound was coming on his trail. Tom turned like 
a stag, brushed aside the bushes and began for the 
first time to run. 

At the top of the next hill, not having heard it 
while he crashed through the undergrowth of the 
bottom, he stopped again, panting. Though still 
far away and faint, it was unmistakable now, and 
there was in the sound a note of melancholy triumph 
and joy. 

The shrewdness of all hunted animals took hold 
of the old man’s nature. He ran half a mile, 
then turned and doubled his track. At a stony 
spot, where a trail does not remain long at best, he 
stopped, swung his arms and jumped as far as he 
could to the right. For a quarter of a mile he con- 
tinued trotting at right angles to the original trail; 
then he turned once more toward the mountains. 

He could hear it most of the time, even when 
he ran. Occasionally, as the dog crossed a bottom 
evidently, it was almost inaudible and seemed far 
away. Then as he reached a highland, it came 


THE PURSUIT 


209 


clearer and surer, more resonant, and closer than 
ever. And now from back there, farther away than 
the dog, came a sound that for a moment chilled his 
blood — the wild, faint yell of a man urging the hound 
on. 

Unreasoning rage stirred within the old man, 
flushed his face with hot blood, made his eyes blaze. 
Who was he to run from any man? Then quickly 
rage cooled and calculation took its place. He 
must throw that hound off his trail. 

He back-tracked once more. He turned at right 
angles to his original trail. He continued for an 
eighth of a mile, then turned back on his second 
track. He crossed the original trail at the point 
where he had left it, and kept straight on forming 
the letter T. Once more, on this short arm of the 
T he turned at right angles, this time toward the 
camp itself, and retracing his steps formed an- 
other T. 

Thus he made an intricate pattern of trails, com- 
parable somewhat to the visible marks made by a 
fancy skater. The hound, finding tracks running ap- 
parently in every direction, would grow bewildered. 
He would circle, of course, but the circles themselves 
would lead him off on tracks that turned back 
on themselves. As an additional puzzle, wherever 
the old man doubled, he put his arms about a tree 
and remained, his body pressed against the trunk 
a moment, as if he had climbed it. “His whiskers 


210 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


will be whiter than they are now,” he grinned, “be- 
fore ever he works all that out.” 

Two miles farther on, breathing hard, he sat 
down on a log, for he must have some rest. He knew 
when the oncoming hound, who had worked out the 
first and simpler puzzle, struck the second and in- 
tricate one. First deathlike silence — the hound 
had come to the end of the trail. Probably he was 
whiffing the trunks of the trees roundabout, looking 
up eagerly into them. As if he had been in one of 
those trees himself, Tom could see it all, so well did 
he know the way of a hound. 

Still silence. The dog would be circling now. 
Followed an eager bay as he struck one of the mis- 
leading trails. He thought he was off! Then 
silence again, and after a moment the long-drawn 
howl of a hound, frankly perplexed, and the fierce, 
angry yell of a man far behind. With fingers that 
trembled because of the chase he had run, Tom 
reached in his pocket and got out a cob pipe. This 
he filled with tobacco, and fumbling in an upper 
pocket of his shirt, found some matches. 

For ten minutes he sat on that fallen pine, smok- 
ing and listening to the unseen drama in the bottoms 
over there beyond the hill, his hopes ever rising, and 
with these hopes a gratifying sense of achievement 
and triumph. Once or twice the dog bayed un- 
certainly. Once or twice the man yelled, it seemed 
to him with lessened confidence. Once it sounded 


THE PURSUIT 


211 


as if the hound had sat down on his haunches, raised 
his muzzle on high, and poured out to heaven his 
perplexity. Tom had seen them do that. Then 
another silence, as if the chase had died out. 

Still Tom sat listening. In his exultation he had 
forgotten for the time home and Molly and the 
horrors he had left. Suddenly he rose, and his 
face was drawn and white. He turned and began 
to run, but even as he did so he knew that it was 
all over. 

Between him and the farthest outskirts of the 
pattern he had worked out, had come one long- 
drawn, triumphant bay after another. The vet- 
eran, wiser by far than any dog Tom had ever known 
in all his knowledge of dogs, had worked the puzzle 
out, had run in ever-greater circles, keeping his head, 
knowing that somewhere, cutting the circumference 
of a greater circle, he would find the true and straight 
trail. _ 

And he was coming, coming fast. He could not 
be more than a mile behind. He must be at the 
top of the hill where Tom had enjoyed his brief 
triumph, he must be smelling the very log on which 
Tom had sat. He had left the log. The sound burst 
on the old fugitive now, almost like a chorus, 
menacing, terrible, inexorable as fate. All the 
hills, all the valleys, were echoing as if a whole pack 
were running. How much worse than futile had 
been his tricks! They had only halted the great 


212 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

bloodhound long enough for men and shotguns to 
come up ! 

From now on he kept straight forward, some- 
times walking, sometimes trotting, sometimes break- 
ing into a run. Now and then he stumbled with 
weariness, once he fell face downward. Anybody 
but a fighter would have taken to a tree, like an 
opossum, run at last to shelter. 

Out of breath, he came at length to the top of a 
ridge, and through an opening in the trees looked 
across a wooded valley beyond which rose the lofty 
undulations of the Tennessee mountains. The 
clouds had been growing thin, and now the sun burst 
through, and flooded those mountains with light. 

“They ain’t a-goin’ to take me,” said the old 
mountaineer — “not alive!” 

Not even the fox waits for hounds to seize him; 
but, his race over, turns at bay and dies with his 
face to his enemies. And now, in the woods of the 
extensive bottoms that lay between the ridge and 
the mountains, old Tom Abercrombie, his race 
over, stopped and turned his facet toward his pur- 
suers. 

And as he did so all fear left him. His mind be- 
came as clear as the sparkling sunlight about him. 
He was no longer a fleeing animal matching wits 
with a pursuing one. He was a man standing up- 
right, looking oncoming fate in the face. 

Old Tom did not think of it this way. And yet, 


THE PURSUIT 


213 


perhaps because of some sense of the fitness of 
things, he took off his hat and dropped it beside 
him. Near at hand a giant sycamore, dead and 
leafless, rose loftily above the smaller growth into 
the sky. Beside this tree he stood, his white hair 
and beard dishevelled and glistening in the sun, his 
eyes, that had shown a momentary despair when he 
sprang up from the log, steady, fierce, undismayed. 

If the hound attacked him he would fight — fight 
with his hands, for he had no other weapon. If the 
hound merely bayed him, he would wait until the 
guards came up. Their commands he would dis- 
regard : he would not even throw up his hands. He 
knew what the result would be, he had no illusions 
about that: Simmons would kill him. 

He did think of Molly. He saw her, all her life 
tramping back and forth from the spring to the 
house, solitary and lonely; he saw the cornfield in 
the bottom, where he had ploughed so many springs. 
He saw the faces of children and grandchildren, 
one by one. These things made him choke, but 
they had no effect upon his mind: that was made 
up. Life is good but it is not worth some things. 

All these impressions ran through his mind, 
swiftly, independent of the element of time. As a 
matter of fact, there was not sufficient interval for 
connected thought. Ahead of him was an open place 
in the woods, a place strewn with flinty stones and 
arrowheads, with now and then a black and rounded 


214 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


boulder, rolled there by glaciers that had once moved 
over the face of the earth. This open spot, made 
barren by forces older than man himself, he had 
crossed in one last effort to make his trail difficult 
for the hound. 

His eyes were fastened on it now. The sun, hot 
and brilliant since the passing of the storms, blazed 
down upon it. On the other side the forest grew 
dense and high like a wall of green. And now out 
of this forest, into the ancient opening, came the 
hound. 

Tom had never felt any grudge against the dog — 
he was only obeying a law of his nature, only running 
a trail. Fascinated, he watched the animal, ob- 
livious for the moment of the significance of his 
presence. He had been running fast in the forest, 
but now on this flinty and difficult ground he slack- 
ened his pace and came on slowly, like a patient, 
methodical fellow who makes sure he’s right as he 
goes along. His nose, almost touching the ground, 
never left the trail. 

In crossing the opening the old man’s foot had 
turned on a stone; he had staggered, and placed his 
hand against one of the black boulders for support. 
And now, when the hound came to this spot he 
stopped; he lifted his head and whiffed the rock the 
man had touched with his hand. Next, he reared 
up on the boulder and looked at its top. Then he 
came on, nose low once more, pendulous ears ac- 


THE PURSUIT 


21 5 


tually dragging on the ground, tail erect and now 
and then wagging stiffly as with joy. 

While Tom still watched him he raised his muzzle; 
and there came from his throat a deep, musical, 
bell-like challenge that echoed loudly in the open- 
ing itself and more airily and sweetly between the 
ridge and the mountains beyond. In answer, from 
a mile behind, so Tom calculated, came a far more 
terrible sound — the wild, savage yells of two men, 
one wilder and more savage than the other. 

The old man took a deep breath and his beard 
was thrust suddenly forward. But for the dog, those 
men would be helpless. But for the dog, he could 
turn now, and the woods would swallow him up. 
In a flash an inspiration was born, a conquering 
purpose such as must have entered the mind of pre- 
historic man. He waited, his eyes on the hound. 

A dog is nearsighted at best, and Sheriff was old. 
When he was a short two hundred feet from the tree 
there came to his nose the smell, not of a trail itself, 
but of the man who made the trail. He stopped 
and lifted his head. A moment he stared. Then 
he raised his grizzled muzzle to the sky and poured 
out to high heaven the announcement that here in 
the woods at the end of the trail, standing beside 
a tree, was a man! 

Then he started back, amazed, for this man, in- 
stead of climbing the tree, as all men did when he 
bayed them, was coming straight toward him. His 


216 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


hand was outstretched, his eyes were blazing, and 
there was a smile on his face. “Old Whiskers!” 
he was saying. “Hush, now, hush! Hush!” The 
man had stooped down, his hand still extended. 
“Come here!” he commanded. 

The great hound began to tremble. Those ter- 
rible eyes were looking deep into his. They were 
commanding him, they were pleading, too. He had 
seen them before, back there in the camp, and he had 
not forgotten. 

He heard behind him another yell. He tried to 
look back, but the eyes held him. “No!” the man 
cried sternly — then, “Old boy — old Whiskers!” 
He began to pant; the bay he would have uttered 
died in his throat. Another yell and another, still 
he did not reply. His tail was tucked now. He was 
looking at the man wonderingly, beseechingly. 
His universe was changing, was centring in that 
man before him, that man who understood. 

Again the yells, and now, beyond the opening 
behind, the faint crash of running footsteps. His 
hair rose on his back with rage. His world had 
turned about. Those were his enemies coming. 
All the loyalty of his dog’s soul had gone out to this 
man who understood, all his hatred to those who 
never had. He started to turn about. He would 
meet them in the opening. He would rush at them. 

“No!” cried the man who understood. 

When he looked at Tom once more the miracle 


THE PURSUIT 


217 


of ages past had been repeated; the man saw in the 
eyes of the dog, trust, humility, undying devotion. 
His voice trembled for the first time. 

“Old Whiskers,” he said gently. “Old Gray 
Whiskers! Quick now!” 

The pursuing guards never knew why the woods 
ahead of them grew suddenly silent, why the tree- 
bay of the bloodhound that had sounded once clear 
and unmistakable sounded no more, though as they 
ran they filled the morning with their yells. They 
did not see the great hound go trembling to the man. 
They did not see the old man for just a second catch 
the massive head between his hands. 

They did not see the two turn and disappear, 
swiftly, silently, into the undergrowth that grew 
densely behind the open space and the giant sycamore 
tree. 

When, all out of breath, they reached the spot 
from whence had proceeded the solitary tree-bay, 
they looked about at vacant woods. Frantically 
they searched the undergrowth, shotguns ready, 
calling to each other in their excitement. Man and 
dog had vanished as if they had never been. 

But Simmons did not believe in miracles. “The 
old devil killed the dog!” he cried. “He had a 
knife about him. But where’s the blood and 
where’s the body?” 

They hurried here and there as they glimpsed 
red spots, only to find a leaf killed by the sun 


218 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

and fallen before season, or a bush reddened by 
berries. 

“We miscalculated the spot,” swore Simmons. 
“It wasn’t here it happened.” 

And he sat down out of breath and leaned his 
burly back against the trunk of a giant sycamore 
tree. 

The sun was dropping over the mountains when 
the two guards, empty-handed, got back to camp. 
The valleys lay in shadow, but far up in the enormous 
folds of the Tennessee mountains its last crimson rays 
shone on a bearded old man trudging along a narrow 
road toward the west. 

He looked weary and footsore and his clothes were 
torn by briers. But his face was alight, as if with 
anticipation of to-morrow. Now and then he spoke. 
And behind him a great, strange-looking, long- 
eared hound lifted his head, as if drinking in the 
sound of his voice. 


X 


THE LITTLE BOY IN THE BLACKBERRY 
PATCH 

S OMETHING strange was going on down 
there in the woods behind the barn. Little 
Tommy Earle was convinced of it as soon as 
he saw old Frank, Irish setter, come galloping across 
the cottonfields from that direction. For old 
Frank was excited, that was plain; and old Frank 
didn’t get excited for nothing. 

Accordingly, Tommy dropped his wagon tongue, 
and watched the old boy round the barn, jump the 
lot fence, and run into the yard. His red silken 
ears were thrown back, his brown eyes were shining, 
and he was looking for somebody to tell his secret to. 
“F’ank!” called the boy. 

At the call the old fellow’s ears flattened and he 
threw up his head, then he came running straight 
to Tommy. There was an eager light in his eyes 
that said plain as words, “Come with me and I’ll 
show you something.” 

Tommy’s heart began to pound. From the kit- 
chen window above his head came the flop-flop of 

219 


220 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


a churn, accompanied by the wailing song of Aunt 
Cindy, the cook. Tommy glanced shrewdly up at 
this window from whence proceeded the melan- 
choly refrain. He must not let Aunt Cindy see him 
leave the yard. That morning after breakfast his 
father and mother had driven off hurriedly in the 
car, following a telephone message from Greenville 
that said Aunt Janet, his mother’s sister, was sick 
in a hospital. His mother had told him she would 
be gone several days, and meanwhile he must do 
everything Aunt Cindy told him to do and nothing 
she did not tell him to do. 

But Tommy had no doubt whatever what Aunt 
Cindy’s answer would be if he asked permission to 
leave the yard and follow Frank into the woods. 
She would put her foot down on it flat, and Aunt 
Cindy had a big foot. Better leave right now, 
while the old woman was in the midst of her churn- 
ing and her song. 

“All right, F’ank,” whispered Tommy. 

They went by a circuitous route that placed first 
the garage, then the barn, between them and the 
kitchen window. Then they broke into a run across 
the cottonfield and entered the woods, Frank lead- 
ing. They had not gone far when Tommy stopped 
— stopped suddenly. Ahead of him was an open- 
ing where the sun blazed down; and in the midst of 
this opening was a creature picking blackberries. 

Its face, round and sunburned, was smeared 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 221 


with the red juice, as were its hands, with which 
it was reaching for more. It stopped eating when 
it discovered Tommy’s presence and looked steadily 
Tommy’s way. It was a boy about Tommy’s own 
size, a boy he had never seen before! 

Under a white cloth hat Tommy’s eyes narrowed. 
What right did that boy have to come on his father’s 
place and pick blackberries? He didn’t have on any 
hat, either; his hair looked as if it had never been 
cut; his clothes were ragged. Ordinarily, Tommy 
rather admired these things, but now, taking in the 
whole appearance of the intruder, he glanced about 
quickly at some rocks that lay near-by, rocks the 
right size to throw. 

But evidently the boy didn’t want to fight. 

“Heh!” he said. 

“Heh,” said Tommy. 

“ What’s your name?” 

“ Tommy — what’s yours? ” 

“Joe.” 

A minute’s silence followed this exchange of es- 
sential information. Tommy drew nearer Joe. Joe 
drew nearer Tommy. 

“That your dog?” 

“Yes — he’s my dog.” 

“He come down here just now. What’s his 
name?” 

“Fank.” 

Another silence. Then the boy spoke. 


222 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

“I seen some fishes down thar in the crick jus’ 
now.” 

“I’ve seen ’em — lots of times.” 

“Say — what about goin’ down thar now?” 

“I don’t care,” said Tommy. 

An hour later they came out of the woods to- 
gether and started for the house, old Frank strolling 
along pleasantly behind them. Joe’s hair was wet 
and plastered down over his face like an Indian’s; 
Tommy’s was also wet under the white cloth hat. 
They had done more than look at fish; they had 
gone in with them. 

Tommy walked close to Joe: he had learned many 
thrilling facts, among them that Joe lived in Green- 
ville and had run away. This he had found out, 
not all at once, but in fragments, while they splashed 
water over one another, and later while they sat 
on the shaded bank of the creek. 

Somebody had “beat Joe up — see!” Joe had 
exhibited a welt on his shoulder and another on his 
leg in proof of the assertion. It seems that previous 
to this Joe had swiped some bananas from the 
fruit stand of one Tony, and that, previous to that, 
Joe had been hungry — “Hung’y as hell” was Joe’s 
way of putting it — a way that commended itself 
to Tommy at once as being extremely picturesque. 
In fact, even while Joe talked he kept on saying it 
over and over in his mind, so fine was the phrase and 
so expansive. 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 223 

There had been a “cop” in the story. Tommy 
did not know what a cop was until Joe told him. 
“Dam o I’ cop” was the phrase, to be exact. The 
cop had chased him, then Joe had run away. It 
seemed that he didn’t stop running for a long time. 
There was also the driver of a motor truck in the 
story, Mike by name. Mike drove the truck that 
carried an oil tank from the city to a town. Mike 
had given him a lift; Mike often did that. When 
they got out in the country here, Joe had asked 
Mike to let him down — he wanted to get some 
blackberries. Mike had said he would pick Joe up 
on the way back. 

Such was the thriller Tommy had listened to. 
It hadn’t come easy, this story, but only after re- 
peated questions. Now and then, while he was 
telling it, Joe had looked at Tommy with a wry, 
wise grin, as if sizing him up. He was little, and he 
couldn’t talk plainly, but he seemed old somehow. 
We live in deeds, not in years, as the poet says. 

Joe was still grinning when they came into the 
back yard. He had held back a time or two, as 
if he were afraid of that big house on the hill, but 
Tommy had over-persuaded him. There wasn’t 
anybody at home, he had declared, but there were 
biscuits and jam in the kitchen. 

Halfway between the barn lot and the house they 
were confronted by Aunt Cindy. She was an 
enormous black woman, dressed always in starched 


224 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


gingham and apron, with a red bandanna handker- 
chief on her head. 

“Whar you been, honey?” she demanded; then 
sternly: “Whose chile dat you got wid you?” 

Tommy did not reply; in fact, he didn’t know; 
what’s more, he didn’t care. It was Joe, that was 
enough. 

She was towering above them now. 

“Who yo’ ma an’ pa, chile?” she demanded of 
the miniature Marco Polo who had come home with 
her charge. “Whar you come from?” 

Marco Polo did not reply. He only grinned up 
at her, an impertinent, scrappy sort of grin. In a 
hard school he had learned the virtue of silence. 

“I found him in the woods,” volunteered Tommy 
at last. “He’s lost an’ he’s goin’ to stay wif me.” 

“Stay wid you, honey?” cried the old woman. 
“No, honey,” she shook her head. “He ain’t 
gwine stay wid you.” 

And she meant it, too, every word of it. Society 
to her was divided into quality white folks like the 
Earles, black folks like herself, and poor white trash 
like this waif; and between the first class and the 
third was there a great gulf fixed. 

“We gwine fin’ who he ma an’ pa is, honey, an’ 
sen’ him home,” was her verdict. 

“You ain’t goin’ to send him home!” cried Tommy, 
his face suddenly crimson. “He ain’t got no home. 
You ain’t goin’ to send him anywhere. He’s goin’ 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 225 


to stay here wif me. He ain’t had anything 
to eat but blackberries. He’s hungry as” — the 
phrase was almost out, but he throttled it — “He’s 
hungry ! ” 

The old woman looked at the waif shrewdly. 

“You hongry?” she asked. “Well, one thing’s 
shore — nobody ever come to Freedom Hill hongry 
an’ went away hongry. You sho’ gwine have 
somethin’ to eat. Den we sen’ you home.” 

She led the way into a kitchen, spacious and cool. 
She made them wash their hands while she looked 
on, shaking her head at the condition of one pair of 
them. She set them down to a table and placed 
before them biscuits and butter and jam, and cold 
milk from the refrigerator. But while she per- 
formed this act of hospitality her face showed the 
determination she had expressed. 

The kitchen opened by a white-panelled passage- 
way into the dining room, and the dining room into 
the big front hall. She left the two of them and 
went into the hall. They heard her ringing the 
telephone, and while they ate her talk came to 
them. 

“Dat you, Mr. Davis? Mr. Davis, dis me. 
Mr. Davis, dey’s a strange chile here. Tommy 
say he foun’ him in de woods. He won’t tell who 
he ma an’ pa is, or whar he come from. Tommy 
say he los’. Mr. Steve ain’t cornin’ back till to- 
morrow. What I gwine do, Mr. Davis? Call 


226 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


up Mr. Bob Kelley? All right, suh — yes, suh. 
Das what I’ll do.”_ 

Joe looked at Tommy with a grin. 

“What’s that ol’ nigger talkin’ about?” he asked. 

Tommy’s eyes narrowed. Old Aunt Cindy wasn’t 
to be called that even by such a travelled and hon- 
oured gentleman as his present guest. 

“Don’t call her a nigger,” he said. “Hear?” 

Joe nodded. There was a touch of wistfulness in 
his eyes now — there had been, ever since he entered 
this mansion stocked with biscuit and jam. 

The old woman’s voice came to the diners clearly 
now. She always grew excited when she talked over 
the telephone. 

“Dat you, Mr. Bob Kelley? Dis Cindy over at 
Mr. Steve Earle. Mr. Kelley, dey’s a stray chile 
here. Yes, suh, jus’ drap from de clouds. Mr. John 
Davis he say you likely git some inquiries about 
him. Mr. Kelley, I gwine sen’ him over to yo’ house 
by Jake. Yes, suh — dis evenin’, right away.” 

Tommy slid down from his chair. Joe went on 
with his biscuits and jam. A dirty little hand that 
two bathings had not whitened closed tight around 
a slender white glass of cold milk. Tommy ran 
into the hall. 

“You ain’t goin’ to send him away!” he cried. 
“He’s goin’ to stay here wif me. He’s goin’ to 
sleep wif me. Hear, Aunt Cindy?” 

Still protesting, he was following her through the 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 227 

hall, out on the high-columned front porch, and 
around the house toward the barn. 

“Hit won’t do, honey,” she was saying over and 
over. “You listen to yo’ mammy now, you ’pen’ 
on her. He ain’t de chile for you to play wid. 
You can’t touch de kittle an’ not git smut on you. 
Yo’ oF mammy know. She raise you from a baby. 
Don’t pull at my skirts, honey. It don’t do no 
good. Yo’ ol’ mammy always is ak de bes’ way 
for you, honey, an’ she always will. Mis’ Bob 
Kelley, she’ll be good to him. Mr. Bob Kelley, 
he’ll fin’ out whar de chile belong.” 

She stopped in the back yard, near the lot. 

“Jake!” she called. “Oh, Jake!” 

From a cabin beside the garden an elongated 
darky uncoiled himself out of a split-bottom chair 
and sauntered leisurely toward her. 

“Jake, hitch up Nelly to de buggy. Dey’s a los’ 
chile here. I done spoke to Mr. Bob Kelley ’bout 
him, an’ I want you to take him over dar.” 

Then Tommy broke loose; then the future master 
of Freedom Hill asserted his authority. He might 
obey the old woman in such minor matters as 
washing his face and putting on a clean nightgown, 
but here was something different. He stood be- 
fore Aunt Cindy and Jake with blazing eyes and 
defied them. He forebade Jake to hitch up Nelly. 

“He’s goin’ to stay here, I tell you! He’s goin’ 
to stay wif me!” 


228 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

“Lordy, lordy!” laughed Jake, and fell back 
three steps, his hand over his mouth. “Ain’t dat 
boy like he paw!” 

“He’s goin’ to stay wif me! He’s goin’ to stay 
wif me!” 

And even Aunt Cindy gave in. The spirit of 
Steve Earle had spoken in Steve Earle’s child. 

When they went back into the kitchen an ob- 
livious diner sat at the kitchen table, bent over a 
plate, and still mopped up blackberry jam with 
buttered biscuit. 

That night the full moon, declining over the 
sheltering eaves of the mansion, sent its rays into 
the windows of the big upstairs bedroom. First 
they fell on a bed where lay one boy asleep, as he 
had slept all his life, on soft mattresses, between 
white sheets. Then the silver light crept slowly 
over the bed, across the floor, where it seemed to 
linger a while on a pile of toys — an engine with three 
passenger cars, a red hook and ladder whose fiery 
horses galloped forever, a picture book open at the 
place where a man in shaggy skins, with a shaggy 
umbrella, stared with bulging eyes at a track in the 
sand. And last this gentle light climbed upon 
another bed and embraced a swarthy little figure 
lying on its side, one arm stretched out, one fist 
closed tight, as if to keep fast hold on this chance 
life had thrown his way. 

Never before had this child slept on a soft mat- 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 229 


tress, never before in a clean nightgown; never 
before that night had he seen a tiled bathroom 
and a white tub where water ran. On one sturdy 
leg that braced the body as it lay on the side the 
moonlight revealed a ridged place, a scar, purple 
and hard. But the hard grin was gone now, the 
face in repose; and the peering moon, which so si- 
lently inspected that room and its inmates, might 
have had a hard time deciding, so serene were the 
two small faces, which, in the years to come, would 
be, please God, the gentleman, and which, God for- 
btd, the ruffian! 

The two were up at sunrise. Jennie, the maid, 
dressed them in clothes just alike — all except shoes 
— Joe drew the line there. They ate breakfast in 
the dining room, Tommy in his own chair, the visi- 
tor elevated to the proper height by a dictionary. 
They ate oatmeal and cream, waffles and syrup. 
While the dew still sparkled on the lawn and on the 
thousands of tiny morning spiderwebs stretched 
along the hedges, they went out into the yard, where 
old Frank came running to meet them with his 
morning welcome of wagging tail. 

But the grin had come back to the visitor’s face 
now. He was afraid of Aunt Cindy, of the maid, of 
Jake, of all grown folks. • In vain Tommy tried to 
play with him: he did not know how to play — a 
wagon was a wagon to him, nothing more; a stick 
a stick, and not a horse to be ridden. Tommy gave 


230 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

it up. They walked around inspecting things, like 
little old men. Now and then the visitor swore, 
the oaths coming naturally, like any other talk. 
He did not even know he was swearing. Tommy, 
listening, grinned now and then, looking at his visi- 
tor with comprehending eyes. The little shrill oaths 
fascinated him; as for the child who uttered them, 
God had never entered his garden in the cool of the 
evening, and he didn’t know he was naked. 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, an old black woman, 
seeing them saunter about, followed by old Frank, 
and noting that they did not play but talked, shook 
her wise head. 

“I wish Mr. Steve would come,” she said. “He 
teachin’ dat chile things he ought not to know.” 

He came early in the afternoon. Tommy saw the 
long shining car turn in at the end of the avenue and 
Frank race to meet it. At the boy’s cry that yonder 
came Papa, Joe turned and started toward the barn. 

“Where you goin’?” demanded Tommy. 

“He’ll beat me up,” said Joe. 

While the car hummed up the avenue the two 
stood close together, Tommy’s face earnest as he 
argued and reassured. 

The car stopped near the garage. A tall, clean- 
shaved man in palm beach clothes and panama hat 
came toward them. “Hello, old man,” he said 
and stooped down and kissed one boy; then straight- 
ening up: “Who’s this you’ve got with you?” 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 231 


“Joe,” said Tommy simply. 

He saw the keen look in the gray eyes, the smile 
that caused the fine wrinkles to gather about their 
corners way up there under the panama hat. 

“Well, Joe — where did you drop from?” 

Then Aunt Cindy called the master of Freedom Hill 
aside, and Tommy saw the old woman talking earn- 
estly up into his face. His father nodded, then came 
toward them, smiling. 

“All right, boys,” he said. “Come up on the 
porch where it’s cool, and tell me all about it.” 

But Joe would not tell. He drew away and 
looked at the man with that scrappy grin. Silence, 
secretiveness where grown people were, had been 
beaten into his small brain. Out behind the house, 
the conference finished, Tommy reassured his guest 
again and again, sometimes laughing, sometimes very 
earnest. 

“Oh, he won’t hurt you, Joe!” 

But Joe’s chest was rising and falling. He was 
afraid of Steve Earle, afraid of those powerful arms, 
even of those kind gray eyes. 

An hour later Steve Earle called Tommy to him. 

“Keep him with you, son,” he said. “I’m going 
to Greenville.” 

He came back in the afternoon. From the or- 
chard they saw him get out of the car and go up on 
the porch. Joe would not come back to the house. 
He did consent, though, to venture into the yard. 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


near the barn. They were sitting on the concrete 
base of the windmill when from around the house 
Tommy saw Mr. John Davis and his wife drive up 
the avenue and get out near the porch. They lived 
across the creek and were neighbours. They did 
not have a car, but drove an old white horse named 
Charlie, who was always pricking up his ears at you, 
hoping you would give him an apple. Mr. Davis 
had a long beard and Mrs. Davis was stout and wore 
spectacles. 

“You go and see what they want,’ 5 grinned Joe. 
“I’ll stay here.” 

In vain Tommy begged him to come, too. They 
weren’t going to hurt him. They would give him 
apples. Joe shook his head. He didn’t want any 
apples. 

So Tommy went, Frank following. They were 
sitting on the porch, talking to his father. Yes, 
they were talking about Joe; and Tommy catching 
the infection of secrecy from his guest, stopped at 
the side of the portico that set high off the ground, 
where he could hear without being seen, while old 
Frank, panting, lay down beside him. 

He knew the voices of them all. He often went 
with his father across the fields to Mr. Davis’s house. 
It was always a delightful excursion. The Davises 
didn’t have any cook or maid, but they had a grape 
arbour whose vines formed a roof thick as a house, and 
out in the garden they had a row of bee gums painted 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 


233 


white. They lived alone; they had no children, 
which struck Tommy as being strange, like not having 
a dog or a cow. The water at their well was very 
cool, and you drew it with a bucket. While his father 
and Mr. Davis talked on the porch, Mrs. Davis 
would call him in the kitchen, him and Frank both. 
She seemed to be forever making a cake. He would 
talk to her and tell her all about Frank. He was 
always sorry when time came to go home. 

Mr. Davis was talking now. He always talked 
in a mumbling way, because of his beard that the 
words got tangled in. They thought the child had 
been sent away until they got Steve’s message just 
now. They came right over. So the boy was still 
here. Well, he was glad of that. 

“I know this much about it, Steve,” he went on. 
“Yesterday afternoon the driver of a truck stopped 
by Squire Kirby’s house on the big road and asked 
the Squire and his wife if they had seen a boy. 
That’s all I know.” 

“Well, I know more than that,” Steve said. 
“I’ve been to Greenville and found out about him 
from the people at the settlement house. A fruit 
dealer reported him to the police for stealing bananas, 
and the police passed the case on to them. The kid 
lives with a man named Grimsley, in a shack down 
by the river, in the gas-tank section. You know 
what that neighbourhood is, John. 

“The settlement house questioned the neighbours. 


234 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

It seems that the kid’s parents are dead, and that 
Grimsley is an uncle by marriage. He’s a brute, 
even for the gas-tank section. The neighbours hear 
him beating the little devil — see him doing it! He 
threatens the kid with policemen all the time. The 
result is that the child lives in deadly terror of all 
policemen, and will run like a rabbit at the sight of 
one.” 

“Oh, poor little thing!” cried Mrs. Davis, and 
Davis growled something that was lost in the tangle 
of his beard. 

Tommy heard his father knock the ashes out of 
his pipe. 

“The settlement-house people,” he went on, “are 
taking steps to get control of the child. They’ve 
laid the case before Judge Fowler. You know what 
that means, John. If anybody has any trouble with 
the judge it’ll be Grimsley, the uncle.” 

“Steve,” said Mrs. Davis, “you’ve seen the child. 
Is he a nice child?” 

“I guess all kids are nice according to their 
chances,” said Earle. “This one hasn’t had any 
chances.” 

“The reason I ask,” said Mrs. Davis, “is that 
John and I have talked — have talked — about adopt- 
ing one. We — we get lonely sometimes — for a 
child.” 

Tommy was holding Frank by the collar now. 
He noticed that it was stifling hot and Frank was 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 235 

panting, that the sunlight on the trees was growing 
strange in colour, that the trees themselves stood 
motionless as if the leaves were made out of iron 
that could not stir, and when he glanced behind 
him, toward the barn, he saw over the hills a black 
cloud. 

Then something in the road drew his attention. 
A man had ridden up on a horse and was dismount- 
ing and coming up the walk. He looked twice be- 
fore he could make sure. It was Bob Kelley, rural 
policeman. 

He left his hiding place and went running toward 
the back yard. There was no one there, not even 
Joe. For a moment his heart stood still. Then 
he remembered that he and Joe had played in the 
barn that morning. Maybe Joe was afraid of the 
cloud and had gone to the barn. He unlatched the 
lot gate, swung it heavily open, and went into the 
high, wide hall. Joe was sitting on the ladder that 
led up into the loft. 

“Heh!” said Tommy. 

Joe looked at him strangely. 

“Guess who’s out there now!” cried Tommy, out 
of breath. “Bob Kelley. He’s cornin’ up the 
walk!” 

“Who’s he?” 

“Pleaseman!” 

Joe gasped. 

“Cop?” 


236 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Yes, cop!” said Tommy, proud that they had 
such things in the country as well as in town. “I’ll 
go an’ fin’ out what he wants. You stay here. I’ll 
come back an’ tell you. Come on, F’ank!” 

He did not look back as he ran. He did not stop 
at the pillar this time. He went right up on the 
porch. Policemen didn’t come to their house every 
day. Kelley had not sat down. 

“That^s all right, Bob,” Earle was saying. “John 
or I will look after him till the matter’s settled.” 

Then, said Kelley, he would be going before the 
storm broke. He went down the steps and down 
the walk. There was no sun now. 

Mrs. Davis rose. She was a stout, motherly 
woman. She was dressed up as if it were Sunday. 
Mr. Davis rose, too. You could never tell because 
of his beard whether he had on a cravat or not. 

“I want to see the child, Steve,” Mrs. Davis said. 
Her face was so earnest it almost frightened Tommy. 
“Oh, I hope I will love him! I could not take a 
child I did not love. I always thought I wanted 
one that had been well brought up. I don’t know 
what I would do with the other kind — but if he loves 


Steve turned and saw Tommy looking up at them 
with wide eyes. Frank had lain down in the walk. 

“Where have you got your friend stuck away, 
old man?” asked Steve. 

“Out at the barn, Papa. He’s skeered.” 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 237 

They all went down the steps. Frank rose and 
followed, with panting mouth and wagging tail. 
He was a part of everything they did. This was his 
place as well as theirs, and he had his share in all 
that went on. As they turned the corner of the 
house they came face to face with the black thunder 
cloud in the west. As if it had seen them, there 
came from its depths a distant rumble. 

Steve Earle held the lot gate open for Mrs. Davis. 
It was like holding the gate of life open to that boy 
in the barn. They went into the wide, lofty hall, 
lined with stalls. The ladder still led into the loft 
but there was no one on it. 

“Joe!” called Tommy shrilly. 

“He’s gone up in the loft,” said Davis. 

Tommy and Mrs. Davis watched the two men 
climb the ladder. Mrs. Davis was breathing hard, 
as if some great test was about to be put to her. 
They heard the men walking about in the rustling 
hay; they heard Steve Earle calling. 

“Joe — Joe — nobody’s going to hurt you, son.” 

Their faces looked worried when they came down. 
Aunt Cindy had run out to them now. She had 
been in the front room, listening between the cur- 
tains to the conversation on the porch. She had 
not seen the child. 

“He’s run off!” screamed Tommy suddenly. 
“Papa, I tol’ him the cop had come.” 

Aunt Cindy was down on her knees and had caught 


238 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


him to her ample bosom as she had caught him so 
many times. He choked down the sobs that had 
begun to rise. With terror he saw that the trees 
that had been standing so still were now rustling 
their leaves violently, and that out at the road a 
cloud of dust was rising. 

Then Frank took charge of things. 

He had gone into the barn with them. He had 
smelled the ladder, the ground, and come out into 
the lot. While they were searching he had run to 
them, looked up into their faces, run back out, his 
nose to the ground, and turned at the entrance to 
look at them once more, ears pricked. Frank had 
known from the first. That empty ladder, that 
straw-carpeted hall, that cleanly kept barn lot, had 
all the time been telling him something that it didn’t 
tell people. But Frank couldn’t talk, so now he 
took his stand beside Steve Earle and barked. 
Steve turned quickly. 

“I get you, Frank!” he said. “Go find him!” 

Gratefully Frank looked up at his master. He 
ran to the lot fence, and reared up on it, smelling 
the top of the planks. Then he drew back, gathered 
himself, and sprang up on the fence. He remained 
poised for a moment, sprang down, and started 
across the cotton patch, his nose to the ground. 

“You had better stay, Mrs. Davis,” said Earle. 

“No, I’m going.” Her motherly face was set, 
the wind was whipping her skirt about her. 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 239 

Aunt Cindy had run to the house and brought her 
a raincoat. She was going, too, declared the black 
woman. They all hurried around the lot. In the 
cottonfield Frank was still waiting. 

“Had we better let Tommy go?” asked Davis. 

“He stood up for the kid, John,” replied Earle. 
“He’s going to be in at the finish.” 

Down by the woods Frank was waiting for them 
now — waiting for these slow-moving bipeds. “This 
is the way he went,” he said plainer than words. 
“Better than if I had seen him, I know.” His 
long silken ears were blown back by the wind. As 
they drew nearer they saw the eagerness of his dark 
eyes. Earle took Tommy by the hand. On the 
other side, his beard blown against him, hurried 
Mr. John Davis. Behind came the women. 

A quarter of a mile in the woods, dark with the 
approaching storm, Earle turned a grim face to his 
neighbour. 

“He’s making straight for the mill dam, John.” 

The breath went out of Tommy with terror. 
That was an awful place, the mill dam! Above it 
the water was fifteen feet deep, his father said. Be- 
low, the water tumbled and foamed over rocks that 
would beat a man’s life out. On top of the dam, 
raised above the glancing water on stays, a narrow 
walkway of single planks was laid. Grown men 
could cross, not boys. 

Once, when he had gone with his father to the mill 


240 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


and no one was looking, Tommy had tried to walk 
out, just a little way. Everything had turned 
black. He only knew his father was calling him to 
look up, not down. But he could not take his eyes 
from the rushing water under his feet. While he 
was falling, arms had snatched him up. Tommy 
began to sob as they hurried. 

It was growing darker in the woods. There had 
been no rain yet, but high up in the trees was a 
roaring sound, and now and then leaves and dead 
twigs came whirling down into the quieter regions 
below. 

“Can you see Frank?” asked Earle. 

“No. Call him, Steve. We may be off the 
track.” 

“I’m afraid to do that, John. If it rains hard, 
as it’s apt to do any minute, he will lose the trail.” 

“There’s nothing else to do!” cried Davis above 
the wind. “We may be going wrong!” 

Earle stopped. His hat had fallen off and he 
had not paused to pick it up. Tommy had never 
seen his face as it was now. 

“Here, John, take the boy,” he said. “I’ll run 
for the dam!” 

Just then, sharp and clear above the wind, from 
the dark wooded bottoms ahead, came a bark — a 
strange little yelp to be made by so big a dog, but 
the kind a bird dog makes when he functions as a 
hound. Tommy saw a smile on his father’s face. 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 241 

“The old dog’s treed, John!” 

Then he started running, Tommy keeping pace. 

“Speak to him, Frank!” he called. “Let us hear 
you talk!” 

Again, in answer, through the woods came the 
shrill, self-conscious yelp, then silence, then the yelp 
again. 

“You wait here, son,” said Earle. “Wait for 
Mrs. Davis and Aunt Cindy. Tell ’em to follow 
the bark. You know the place, don’t you? That’s 
the boy. Come on, John! Speak to us, Frank! 
Speak to us, old man ! ” 

The two men were looking up into a lofty, tossing 
tree when Tommy and the women reached them. 
Above them the trees thrashed back and forth be- 
wilderingly, showing the stormy sky, then covering 
it over, then showing it again. And there, looking 
up into the tree also, eyes shining, tongue hanging 
out, sides heaving, was old Frank. Once he reared 
up on the trunk of the tree as if to make sure again. 
He whiffed the bark, his tail wagging. Then he 
jumped down and looked up once more. 

Earle’s voice was strangely quiet when he spoke. 

“I see him,” he said. They all crowded about. 
“My God — he’s way out at the end of the top limb. 

If his head swims ” He began to talk loud, his 

face still raised. “Joe, listen, old man. We are 
all your friends down here. Tommy’s here.” 

Davis had sat down on the ground and was hur- 


242 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


riedly pulling off his shoes. His beard fell down 
over his shirt and his hands were trembling. 

“It won’t do, John,” spoke Steve Earle, and 
Tommy, aghast, saw the look on his father’s face. 
“The limb he’s on will never hold you. He might 
try to get farther out, and if he does ” 

Then, as calmly as she could, Mrs. Davis called to 
the boy, pleading with him to come down, telling him 
that she would be his mother, not knowing, anxious, 
excited woman that she was, that the word probably 
meant nothing to that child tossing up there in midair. 

And now for the first time Tommy’s straining 
eyes saw — saw the white face, the little body pressed 
against the swaying limb, saw the frantic arms 
clinging to the lofty perch, saw the whole tree mov- 
ing dizzily back and forth against the stormy sky, 
as if in the hands of a giant who was trying to shake 
that tiny figure down. 

The voice of the boy rang out shrill and clear above 
the tumult of the wind and the tearing leaves. 

“Joe! You hear me, Joe, don’t you?” The 
voice was quiet and sure now, the nerves of the man 
that was to be had steadied. Only grammar went 
all to pieces; it had been deteriorating these last 
twenty-four hours. A boy’s grammar is a struc- 
ture always ready to tumble, like a house of cards. 

“They ain’t no cop down here, Joe. We done 
sent him home. He’s gone, Joe, honest he has. 
You know me, Joe. I wouldn’t tell you no lie!” 


IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH 243 

Now the figure up there stirred. A small bare 
foot felt down and reached uncertainly, as if blown 
about by the wind, for a lower branch; a small hand 
that had clung to a glass of milk now clung to a 
limb above his head. Then Tommy saw that his 
father, with upraised face, was standing directly 
under that figure up there in the angry foliage. 

“Steady, Joe, old scout !” said Earle. 

“Don’t talk to him. Papa,” pleaded Tommy. 

“He’s right, Steve,” spoke Mrs. Davis. 

But once after this Tommy spoke. 

“Joe! Try that un on the other side!” 

Again they watched the foot feeling about. 
Again it found the limb. Once they saw him, like 
a bear cub, hug the trunk. Once he slid and frag- 
ments of bark came tumbling down. Closer to 
earth drew the small figure. They could hear the 
calloused little bare feet scraping the bark. Then, 
all of a sudden, Steve Earle had swung himself up 
by the lower branches. His strong arms reached 
upward and were lowered down to them, and from 
his fingers a gasping little figure slid to the ground. 

It was still light enough to see the face. The 
grin with which he had started out in life to brave 
an unfriendly world was gone, and in its place was 
terror — terror of those awful heights, of that sway- 
ing tree, of night and storm, and now of these faces 
about him. The sturdy chest was rising and falling. 
He looked pitifully small, like a baby. 


244 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


There came a blinding flash of lightning, and a 
clap of thunder that seemed to burst the woods open. 
In the momentary flash they saw his white face and 
dilated eyes. 

Mrs. Davis had sunk to her knees, arms out- 
stretched. 

“Darling!” she cried. Tommy had heard his 
mother say it that way. Then he turned his head 
in a sort of embarrassment, for Joe had run into 
Mrs. Davis’s arms, and Joe was sobbing on Mrs. 
Davis’s ample bosom; and no gentleman, big or 
small, likes to witness his friend’s emotions. 

“I guess it’s a go, Steve,” said John Davis. 

“Looks like it, John,” replied Steve. 

And then the rain that had held back so long came 
down through the forest in a deluge. 


XI 

BLOOD MONEY 


MAN,” says Poor Richard, “has three 



friends — an old wife, an old dog, and money.” 


Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. 
He had an old wife and he had an old dog, but he had 
no money. And there are times when, let com- 
fortable moralists say what they please, a man’s need 
for money overshadows everything else. Such a 
time had come to Jim Taylor. 

It came at one o’clock on a cold, starry March 
morning. Since sundown he and the veterinarian 
from Breton Junction had been working out in the 
lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, 
his wife, had hurried back and forth from the kitchen 
with pots of hot water. 

“Better go to bed now, gal,” he had said over and 
over. But she had not gone. 

Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white 
Llewellyn setter, had hung about within the circle 
of light cast by the lantern. He had followed Mary 
to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protec- 
tor. He had gone with Jim to the well after water. 


246 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

While Jim and the doctor worked, he had sat gravely 
on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the 
veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, 
lank, a bit stooped, stood in the middle of the lot, 
Mary on one side. Prince on the other. Before him 
lay his mule, dead. 

Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not un- 
common. But on this particular mule Jim had 
depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton 
crop he had depended for money to pay off the mort- 
gage on his farm — the farm that represented his and 
Mary’s belated plunge in life. 

Perhaps to say Mary’s plunge would be nearer the 
truth. But for her, Jim would have remained an 
easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog before 
the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing 
poles out under the shed. His was the lore of field 
and stream, not of business. It was Mary who, 
two years before, had seen in the advancing price of 
cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked 
him into trying to make terms with Old Man Thor- 
nycroft, his landlord. 

“All right, gal,” he had said one morning; “here 
goes.” 

He had come back with a new light in his gray, 
twinkling sportsman’s eyes. He had got right down 
to work. The sound of his hammer as he patched 
barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of 
his shotgun in the woods. He had followed the 


BLOOD MONEY 


247 


furrow as earnestly as if it were a wild-turkey track 
in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter, 
looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. 
He had met his first payments. Then had come 
the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the chance 
to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had 
borrowed to the limit on the coming season’s pros- 
pects. He had bought ample fertilizer, a new wagon, 
a new plough. And now the mule, without which all 
these things were useless, lay at his feet a mass of 
worse than useless flesh. 

The shivering voice of Mary at his side — he 
hadn’t realized before how cold it was — roused him 
from his melancholy contemplation of the spectacle. 

“What’re we goin’ to do now, Jim?” 

“Oh, we’ll manage somehow,” he declared. 

He picked up the lantern, looked down into her 
face, and his eyes twinkled momentarily. 

“That mule was lazy, anyhow.” 

But there was no answering twinkle in Mary’s 
eyes as they turned back toward the house. They 
left the lot gate open, no need to close it now, and old 
Prince followed with subdued mien at their heels; 
their troubles were his troubles, and, besides, he 
had rather liked the mule in a condescending sort 
of way. 

“How much will a new mule cost?” Mary asked 
as they went up the steps, their footfalls sounding 
loud in the dead silence down there under the stars. 


248 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Well, two hundred dollars will get one you won’t 
have to prop up betwixt the traces.” 

He did not see the sudden eagerness in her face. 
He pushed the door open for her. 

“Come in, old man,” he said to Prince. “You 
done the best you could.” 

In the unceiled kitchen he set the lantern down 
on the table. “Don’t you bother, gal,” he said to 
Mary. “You look all wore out. Go to bed now and 
get some sleep. I’ll go to Greenville to-morrow and 
see if I can’t borrow the money.” 

But next day in town Jim found, as he had been 
afraid he would find, that it is not easy for a man 
known primarily as a hunter and fisherman to bor- 
row two hundred dollars. He had not even gone to 
see Thorny croft. The old man would be glad 
enough of an opportunity to get the improved place 
back; Jim knew that. 

But he did call on the banks. They were sorry, 
cashiers explained courteously after they had ques- 
tioned him briefly through barred windows. But 
right at this particular time their customers had 
use for all the money they could get their hands on, 
and 

“You think you’ve got it,” he said to Mary 
that night before the fire, “till you come out in the 
street and feel in your pockets. Then you know you 
ain’t.” 

“But, Jim — what’re you goin’ to do now?” 


BLOOD MONEY 249 

“I’ll bait another hook, Mary,” he said, trying 
to conceal the growing anxiety he felt. 

Old Prince went joyfully with him when next morn- 
ing early he set out on foot to call on the few farm- 
ers he knew who might have money to lend; Prince 
always went when Jim was afoot. The sun rose 
on them when, a mile up the road, they came in sight 
of the Northern Hunt Club. It shone ruddily on 
the bare oaks and the columned porticos, and the 
white stables and kennels in the rear. 

Jim never saw the place without a touch of grave 
reminiscence. Here used to come old Doctor Tol- 
man from New York, to attend the field trials and 
to hunt, and Jim had been his hunting companion. 
On just such mornings as this he would join the 
doctor out here in the road. Before those stone 
gate posts that marked the entrance to the grounds 
they had had their last talk, eight years ago. 

“Don’t know when I’ll get back, Jim,” the doctor 
had said. “I can’t tramp around as I used to, and 
my practice gets heavier instead of easing up. I 
want to say this, Jim: I’ve hunted with many a man, 
but you’re the best sport I ever went into the fields 
with. I’m going to send you a pup. Call him 
‘Prince’ if you want to. He’s got a pedigree like a 
king — goes back to the old country. He’s good 
enough for you, and you’re good enough for him.” 

That winter, just before the news came of the 
doctor’s death, Prince had arrived at Breton June- 


250 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


tion by express; a roly-poly puppy done up in a crate 
and scared to death. Jim had reared him tenderly, 
taught him while he was still a pup to retrieve and 
stand steady in the yard, taken him into the fields 
when he was old enough, shown him what was nec- 
essary, and left the rest to instinct. Season after 
season he had watched the dog gain in wisdom and 
steadfastness. Now they understood one another as 
only hunting man and hunting dog, who have been 
intimately associated for years, can understand. 
Together they passed the club, old Prince running 
contentedly ahead. 

They were gone all day. First Jim called on 
Steve Earle, then on Squire Kirby. Both lived 
seven miles away, but they were his best chance. 
The Squire and his wife had gone to visit their 
children and would not be back till Christmas. 
Steve Earle had left the day before for New York 
on business. 

He did not mention his troubles to Steve Earle’s 
wife. He was not the man to parade his per- 
plexities before a woman. He turned back toward 
the section where lived small farmers, like himself. 
It was dusk when he returned home. Prince trotting 
with dejected tail at his heels, for Prince had seen 
the troubled look in his master’s eyes. One farmer 
after another had turned Jim down. The country 
was poor, for one thing. But for Kirby and Earle 
there were no large planters in it; and in this day 


BLOOD MONEY 251 

of high-priced cotton each small farmer was strain- 
ing every nerve to better his own fortunes. 

“I’d like to, Jim,” they had said, “but ” 

“Oh, that’s all right,” Jim had replied. 

He answered Mary’s questions cheerfully enough. 
She had stuck to him through thick and thin, mostly 
thin, he reckoned, and he was going to stick to her. 
This farm was her gamble, and he was going to see 
it through for her. But in the silence of the night, 
unknown to her, he fought one of the hardest battles 
of his life, a battle that kept him awake and drenched 
him with perspiration. For he was a hunter, was 
Jim, and old Prince was his dog. 

He arose with grave face to greet another day. 
While Mary was in the kitchen getting breakfast, 
he rummaged secretly among his queer assortment 
of papers — gun catalogues, directions about build- 
ing a boat, advertisements of shotgun shells with 
hunting dogs painted on them. At last he found 
it — Prince’s pedigree that Doctor Tolman had sent 
along with Prince. He folded it carefully, stuck 
it in his pocket, and replaced the other papers. 

He was going to see some men at the club, he told 
Mary at breakfast. He might take a little round. 
She could look for him when she saw him. She 
insisted on putting up a lunch for him. She saw 
him getting back before night, she laughed, when 
he protested. She came out on the porch with him 
and patted him on the back when he went down 


252 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


the steps in his patched old hunting coat, his gun 
stuck under his arm. 

He went up the road in his long, lurching, hunts- 
man’s stride. Old Prince raced ahead, then back 
to him, barking with joy, leaping into his face like 
the athlete he was, his eyes almost fierce with eager- 
ness. On every side frost-sparkling strawfields, 
horizoned by pine woods, shimmered in the sun. 
The air came fresh like cold spring water. Hun- 
dreds of times before on such mornings he and 
Prince had set out this way. Hundreds of times 
they had come home in the gloaming, Prince trot- 
ting behind, Jim’s hunting coat bulging with birds. 

But this was to be no such hunt. A mile up the 
road he called the old setter to him. Prince came 
in with drooped ears and upraised, bewildered eyes. 
That was what hurt. That was what was going to 
hurt more and more — that Prince would never 
understand. 

They turned in between the stone gate posts of 
the club and up the walk toward the white columns 
of the portico. Jim remembered a picture in Mar- 
tha’s Bible of an old high priest going to an altar with 
a sheep following behind. This was his place of 
sacrifice, and old Prince, suddenly subdued, was 
trotting at his heels. 

The butler answered his knock at the door. 
Why, yes, he said in answer to Jim’s question, there 
was a man upstairs named Gordon. He was a great 


BLOOD MONEY 


25 3 


dog man; he owned kennels up in Jersey. He just got 
in last night — down for the field trials and a few days’ 
shooting before going to South America. Some big 
after-the-war business. He would call Mr. Gordon. 

Jim waited anxiously on the porch, twisting his 
scraggly gray moustache and biting the ends. Be- 
side him stood old Prince, looking up into his grave 
face. At last the man came out, bareheaded — tall, 
ruddy, clean-cut, a sportsman every inch. Jim 
would have spotted him in a crowd and he would 
have spotted Jim — soul mates, as it were. The 
quick glance he gave old Prince was full of admi- 
ration. 

“What’s his name?” 

“Prince.” 

The man looked down appraisingly at the long, 
straight line of the back, the white, wavy, silken 
hair, that glistened like satin in the sun, the noble 
dome of the head with its one lemon-coloured ear, 
the intelligence, courage, and high breeding in the 
upraised, fearless eyes. 

“Where did you get him?” 

Jim told him. 

“Why, I knew Doctor Tolman well. A fine old 
gentleman. Gordon’s my name. Mr. Taylor, I’m 
glad to meet you. You know, I like the looks of 
Prince here. He is — well, there are not many like 
him. Did Doctor Tolman leave any record of his 
pedigree?” 


254 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

Jim’s hand trembled a bit as he reached in his 
pocket. It was almost with regret that he saw the 
unmistakable pleasure in Gordon’s eyes as he glanced 
quickly down the record that told why Prince was 
what he was. 

“I tell you what I’ll do,” said Gordon, handing 
the paper back, “I’ll get on my hunting things and 
we’ll take a little round — just you and I and Prince. 
Won’t you come in?” 

Jim shook his head. While Gordon was gone he 
sat down on the stone steps, his gun between his 
knees. Yonder lay the sunlit country he and 
Prince knew so well. Prince came to him and laid 
his head on his knee. He knew when a man was in 
trouble, did Prince. 

All day they hunted through a country of dis- 
tant prospects, a country that rolled like the sea, a 
country brown with broomstraw fields, green with 
pine woods, gray with patches of bare winter oaks. 
Back and forth ahead, sometimes so far they could 
hardly make him out, again so close they could 
hear the pant of his breath, swept old Prince. 

Sometimes they saw him stop short, a mere speck 
of white against a distant hill. Again in creek bot- 
toms, in the edges of woods, they found him, erect, 
motionless, tail straight out, a living, breathing 
statue in white. They advanced side by side; the 
staccato of their shots rang out in the amber air; out 
of whirling coveys birds tumbled. And always 


BLOOD MONEY 


255 


here came old Prince to them, bird in mouth, ears 
thrown back, fine old eyes aglow with a sportsman’s 
joy. 

Not even Prince himself had ever done more 
brilliant work. He didn’t know that every covey 
he found, every bird he retrieved, was setting a 
price as it were on his head, dooming him in his old 
age to exile under a strange master in a strange land. 
But Jim knew, watching with sinking heart the ad- 
miration in Gordon’s eyes. 

They ate Mary’s lunch on a log in the woods, 
sitting side by side in the democracy of the out of 
doors. They talked about hunting and dogs. They 
took turns tossing biscuit to hungry old Prince, 
who sat at a distance like the gentleman he was, and 
who caught them skillfully, then lay down to eat 
them, his tail dragging gratefully across the dead 
leaves. 

At last they rose from the log. Old Prince sprang 
to his feet, ears pricked, eyes shining. A wave of 
Jim’s hand and he was off in his strong, steady 
gallop to new conquests. Their shots rang out in 
other fields and woods. The sun dropped closer 
to the horizon. The shadows crept farther out 
into the fields and deeper into the spirit of Jim 
Taylor. 

It was early dusk when they stood in front of the 
stone gate posts of the club, and Gordon spoke 
about it at last. 


256 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Are you sure you want to sell him, Taylor?” 

Jim swallowed. “That’s what I come for, Mr 
Gordon.” 

“Well, I think two hundred and fifty would be a 
fair price at his age.” 

“That’s fair enough,” said Jim. 

“All right. Come in and we’ll fix it up.” 

They went up the walk together in silence and 
around the club to the kennels. Close to his mas- 
ter’s heels trotted old Prince, tired now, eyes turned 
longingly down the road toward his home and his 
fire. 

“You can chain him there,” said Gordon. 

“Here?” asked Jim, for things seemed suddenly 
to be swimming around. 

“Yes— to that kennel. That’s it. Now we’ll 
go inside.” 

Jim knew he was in the wide hall before the fire, 
that he was shaking hands with two or three men 
Gordon introduced him to, that he was upstairs in 
Gordon’s room, that Gordon had counted out twenty- 
odd crisp bills on the table. But all these things 
were confused and blurred in his mind. For out 
there as he turned away old Prince had looked at 
him with drooped ears, and pleading eyes that for 
the first time in their long relationship did not under- 
stand. 

Gordon came downstairs with him. He was 
looking for a telegram calling him away any hour 


BLOOD MONEY 


257 


now, he said. Old Prince would be well taken care 
of while he was gone. He had an old groom who was 
a wizard with dogs. Out on the porch they shook 
hands. In the growing darkness Jim trudged, soli- 
tary, home. His problem was solved; Mary’s home 
was saved. But in front of that kennel Prince would 
be waiting for him to come back; and as long as he 
lived, wherever he went, Prince would still be wait- 
ing for him to come back. It was a faithful friend 
he had sold, one that would have died for him. It 
was blood money that crackled in his pocket. 
Mary was cooking supper when he appeared, soli- 
tary and gaunt, in the kitchen. Old Prince was 
going to see something of the world now, he explained. 

“Why, Jim!” she cried. “If you had only told 
me!” 

She came to him and caught him by both shoulders. 
She looked up pityingly into his face. 

“Poor old Jim — why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Oh, well, there wasn’t any use, Mary. Mr. 
Gordon knows how to treat a dog like Prince. I 
didn’t mind much.” 

So he spoke, boldly, in the kitchen. But as he 
went about his work in the yard he missed the 
silent companionship of Prince at his heels. As 
he ate supper, his eyes from force of habit wan- 
dered over the table for scraps of food for Prince. 
While he sat smoking his pipe before the bedroom 
fire he tried resolutely not to look at the empty rug 


258 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


in front of the hearth. And when later he went out 
to draw water the yard was desolate, and the moon 
risen over the fields looked at him in solemn re- 
proach. 

Next day he rode to Greenville with Tom Jen- 
nings, a neighbouring farmer, and bought a mule. 
They had passed the club before sunrise, sitting side 
by side on the wagon seat in the cold morning air. 
No sound had come from those white kennels which he 
could make out dimly in the back yard like tomb- 
stones. Old Prince was not the kind of dog to 
whine or howl. 

But all that morning while he went from one sales 
stable to another Jim knew Prince would be pricking 
his ears at every footstep around the club, and 
scanning every approaching face with hopeful, eager 
eyes. He had known some bird dogs who were the 
property of any hunter who chanced along with a 
gun, and others that stuck to one man, and one man 
alone. Prince was a one man’s dog. 

He left town in the afternoon, sitting on a box in 
the rear of Jennings’s wagon, leading the mule by a 
halter. Before sunset they came to the country 
where he and Prince had hunted a hundred times. 
On top of that steep hill, yonder by that dead pine, 
Prince had held a covey an hour one stormy day 
in a gale of wind that threatened to blow him off his 
feet. 

Into this swift creek, over whose bridge the 


BLOOD MONEY 


259 


wagon wheels rumbled. Prince had plunged one icy 
morning and retrieved a wounded bird, the water 
freezing on him as he stepped dripping out. These 
things and others like them, in spite of himself, 
passed, along with the slowly passing landscape, 
through the mind of Jim Taylor while the sun 
dropped low over the hills and Tom Jennings talked 
about what a bargain the mule was, and the mule 
pulled back, as mules always do, on the halter. 

It was nearly dusk when they came in sight of 
the club, whose lights twinkled through the trees, 
and Jennings spoke up suddenly: 

“Hello! Ain’t that your wife yonder?” 

Jim glanced around. “Looks like her, Tom.” 

“She just left the club.” 

“Been to sell eggs, likely.” 

But when they caught up with her Jim saw that 
she was in her best black dress with the black beaded 
bonnet, and when he helped her in the wagon he 
noticed that her face was worried. She did not even 
seem to observe the mule; and Jim, as he led his 
sleek new purchase to the barn, was wondering what 
it all meant. 

He was still wondering while he finished his lonely 
work about the yard. As he stamped up the back 
steps he saw her through the kitchen window rise 
suddenly from a chair. She had changed her dress, 
but she had not started the fire or lit the lamp. 
He must have surprised her. 


260 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

Oh, she was just tired, she said in reply to his anx- 
ious question. She had been to the club to sell eggs. 

“They must have been mighty fine eggs,” he 
said, his eyes twinkling kindly, “for you to dress up 
so. You must have toted ’em in your hands, too, 
for you forgot your basket.” 

She sank into a chair, looking up helplessly at him. 

“Sit down, Jim,” she said, Then she went on: 
“I never meant to tell you, Jim. I tried — I tried 
to buy him back.” 

“Buy him?” 

“Yes, old Prince.” 

“Why, Mary, I thought I told you — he give me 
two hundred and fifty dollars.” 

“I know. I offered him what he gave.” 

“You — you done what?” 

She smiled a little at the amazement in his 
face, but her voice trembled as she made her con- 
fession. For ten years she had been saving up on 
chickens and eggs, a quarter here, a half-dollar there. 
In secret she had dreamed and planned. They 
would have new furniture, she had thought, when 
the house was theirs — new furniture and a parlour. 
She had meant to surprise him, not to let him know 
till it came. She had the furniture picked out in 
a catalogue. 

“Jim,” she concluded, “I’ve saved up two hun- 
dred and fifty-four dollars and twenty cents!” 

His arm was about her shoulders. “Poor gal,” 


BLOOD MONEY 


261 


he said. “She would have give it all up for me 
and Prince. Now, now — don’t cry. It’s all the 
same — you tried.” 

She wiped her eyes on her apron and looked at him. 

“I saw last night how hard hit you was. I 
never knew till then just how much store you set 
on Prince. And I never knew how much I thought 
of him, for what you love, I love. I made up my 
mind then, Jim. After dinner I went to the club. 
I had to wait a long time, for he was out hunting. 
When he came in I told him I’d give him what he 
gave you, and four dollars more. Jim, I thought 
he understood, he looked so kind. He made me 
set down there in the big room. Then, Jim, I 
told him — told him how it was with us.” 

Jim’s face grew suddenly stern. “You told him 
that?” 

She nodded. 

“And he turned you down?” 

“Oh, he was nice enough, as nice as if I was his 
mother. He came out on the porch with me; he 
wanted to send me home. But he said he didn’t 
feel like selling him — selling old Prince; that it was 
a bargain between you and him. Jim, when he 
turned back, I went round the club house. He was 
chained to a kennel. He knew me, Jim. He 
thought I had come after him!” 

She was crying outright now, there beside her 
cold stove, and wiping her eyes on her apron. 


262 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


“Well,” said Jim solemnly, “I’ve hunted with 
many a man. I never knew one to be white in the 
field and black outside before.” 

They ate a silent supper. They went into the 
bedroom before the fire. Above the mantel was a 
picture of a dog pointing, over the bed another of 
a dog retrieving. And in Jim’s mind was another 
of old Prince sitting off at a distance like the gentle- 
man he was, and a man on the log at his own side 
eating Mary’s lunch. 

“God Almighty!” he said to himself. 

Out in the night came the roar of the Florida 
Limited. It whistled once long and melodiously, 
then twice in short staccatos. That meant passen- 
gers for the club or passengers from the club for the 
train. Maybe, right now, old Prince was waiting 
on the station platform in the glare of the head- 
light, wondering what it all meant. Maybe by to- 
morrow he would be hundreds of miles away. 

Jim rose, picked up the bucket, and stepped out 
into the cold moonlight. Even on a little trip like 
this Prince had always come with him. He could 
imagine he saw him now, sitting on his haunches 
out there in the yard, waiting for the water to be 
drawn. He had comforted himself with the thought 
that Gordon would be kind to Prince, and now — — 

“A man that would treat a woman like that,” he 
said bitterly, “would kick a dog!” 

He turned back to the house, his head bowed , 


BLOOD MONEY 


263 


As he went up the steps he seemed to hear up the 
misty moonlit road that led to the club a faint 
tinkle like that made by a running dog’s collar. 
He stood listening for a moment. The ghost of a 
sound had ceased. He went inside and closed the 
door behind him. 

Mary sat by the fire above the empty rug, her 
chin in her hand. He placed the bucket on the 
stand and washed his face, smoothing back with a 
big wet hand his heavy, iron-gray hair. He sat 
down and began to undress in silence. He had taken 
off one shoe when he heard it again — the tinkle, un- 
mistakable this time, of a running dog’s collar. 

“What’s that, Jim?” demanded Mary. 

But he was already on his feet and halfway down 
the hall, Mary close behind him. 

“It’s him!” he said grimly. “He run away!” 

He threw the door open. Big, white, with 
shining eyes, old Prince was jumping all over him, 
jumping up into his face, and into the face of Mary. 
They turned back to the fire. He was running round 
and round the room, looking at them over the table, 
his tail beating chair rungs and bedstead. He was 
frantic with joy; his eyes were aglow with happi- 
ness, the happiness of a dog that has come home. 

“ Get my hat, Mary.” 

“Why, Jim?” 

“It was blood money bought him but I’ve got to 
take him back.” 


264 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


She pleaded with him. There was her money. 
Maybe he would take it now. 

But Jim’s face was set. “He turned you down 
once, gal. He’ll never have another chance!” 

She brought him his hat, her face white. 

“Come on, old man,” he said, and started for the 
door. 

'But Prince hung back, ears drooped, eyes plead- 
ing. 

“Come on, sir!” 

He pretended not to understand. He sat down 
on his haunches. He lay down humbly on the 
floor, head between his paws, tail dragging con- 
tritely across the rag rug. He showed decided 
symptoms of an intention to crawl under the bed, 
and Jim started grimly toward him. Then it was 
that Mary saw. 

/‘Hold on, Jim! What’s this on him?” 

She was down on the floor with the dog. She 
jerked something off his collar. 

“Light the lamp, Jim!” she cried. 

With trembling hands he obeyed. She had risen 
now, so had Prince. He had taken refuge behind 
her skirts, from which point of vantage he was look- 
ing round her up into the face of his master. The 
light Jim held over her shoulder showed writing on 
a piece of paper. 

“Jim!” she cried, all out of breath, “Jim! It 
says: ‘Compliments of Mr. Gordon to Mrs. Taylor. 


BLOOD MONEY 


265 


You see, I couldn’t sell him to you, but I want you 
two to have him. I am leaving in a few minutes. 
No time for more. The train is coming.” 

Jim set the lamp on the table. “Well, well!” 
he said and sank into a chair. Before him the fire 
roared and crackled up the chimney. Prince’s head 
was on his knee. He saw a man sitting on a log 
beside him in the woods. He looked into the man’s 
clear sportsman’s eyes. 

Far in the north through the stillness of the night 
he heard the faint, vanishing whistle of the Limited. 
He put his hand on Prince’s silken head, and Prince 
nestled close and sat down on his haunches. Jim’s 
arm was about the shoulders of Mary, who had knelt 
down beside him. 

“Well, well!” he said again, and the fire grew dim 
and blurred before his eyes. 


XII 


THE CALL OF HOME 

O LD Frank, Irish setter, crawled out of 
his clean warm kennel underneath the back 
porch; stretched his long, keen muscles 
till they cracked ; yawned with a fog of frosted breath 
at the misty winter sun risen over distant moun- 
tains; then trotted around the side of the big white 
house called Freedom Hill — the house that was his 
master’s home and his own. 

As if a happy thought had struck him, he broke 
into a sudden burst of speed. He ran up the front 
steps three at a bound. He scratched at the side 
front doors with the fan-shaped transom above. 
He waited with ears pricked and wagging tail, 
nose to the crack of the door. 

For it was always interesting to speculate on who 
would open the doors on this particular morning. 
Maybe it would be the master, Steve Earle, maybe 
the mistress, Marian Earle, maybe the boy Tommy 
— maybe old Aunt Cindy the cook. If it were the 
old black woman she would grumble. She would 
declare she didn’t have time to bother with a dog 
266 


THE CALL OF HOME 


267 


while her breakfast waited on the stove. She 
would remind him that he was only a dog. But 
she would let him in, for all that. 

He scratched again. He didn’t like to be kept 
expectant; he grew excited when he had to wait. 
He had worn a place on the door where he scratched. 
Suddenly he turned his head sideways, intently 
listening, for someone had opened the living-room 
door. He began to pant, and his eyes glowed with 
gratitude. That step coming down the hall — he 
would know it anywhere. He could hardly wait 
now. 

The door opened and he looked up past broad 
shoulders into kindly gray eyes. His ears flattened 
with reverence, even while his eyes shone with 
comradeship. 

“Come in, old man,” said Steve Earle — he al- 
ways said just that. 

Frank stopped before the living-room door, and 
looked up at his master. He had to depend on 
human beings in matters like the opening of doors. 
And now he was in the living room, where a fire of 
oak logs roared up the chimney. Overwhelming 
joy seized him that he should be in here. He ran 
to Marian Earle and laid his head on her lap, look- 
ing up into her face; then to Tommy Earle, the boy, 
who caught hold of his heavy red mane. They 
were all smiling at him. 

He grew embarrassed and poked his head against 


268 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


the shirt bosom of the boy. He sat down before 
his mistress and raised his paw to shake hands. 
He wanted to show them in some way that he was 
grateful for all this. Then he looked around the 
room and his long silken-red ears drooped. 

For this morning was different from other morn- 
ings. People were looking down at him in a differ- 
ent way. Not only that, but Lancaster, his mas- 
ter’s friend who lived in New York and who had 
driven out unexpectedly yesterday from Breton 
Junction, stood before the fire, overcoat over his 
arm, satchel at his feet. Then he saw on the table 
his collar and chain. And now old Frank knew — 
knew he was going on a journey. 

But more than that he knew, for his was the wis- 
dom of the seasoned bird dog. Steve Earle’s over- 
coat hung on the hat rack in the hall. His favourite 
gun was over yonder in the corner, the hunting coat 
draped over it. Steve Earle was not going. 

It was this that made him look with vaguely 
troubled eyes into the faces of master and mistress 
and boy. It was this which filled him with fore- 
boding. 

“I don’t believe,” Lancaster was smiling down 
at him, “I don’t believe lie’s very keen about going, 
Steve.” 

“Oh, Frank’ll be all right,” laughed Earle. “He’s 
a good scout. Just had a sort of exiled feeling for 
a moment. He’s a countryman like the rest of us. 


THE CALL OF HOME 


269 


He doesn’t like to leave home. I’m glad for him 
to go. He’ll see something of the world.” 

So spoke Steve Earle, the master. But out in 
the spacious kitchen, hung with pots and pans, 
where his mistress and Tommy put his pot of break- 
fast before him and watched while he ate — out in 
the kitchen old Aunt Cindy, the cook, raised her 
voice in protest. 

“Ain’t dey got no dogs up in New York whar 
dat man come from?” she demanded. “Why 
don’t he have a dog of his own, den? He rich enough 
to buy a dozen. What he want to stop over here 
an’ borry our dog for? What he gwine to take him 
to. Miss Marian? Fluridy, you say? Lordy, lordy, 
dat a long way to take our dog, a powerful long way ! ” 

“But he’s goin’ to bring him back, though!” cried 
Tommy. 

“ Well, honey, I don’t know about dat. You never 
can tell. Dis here’s Friday, an’ Friday a bad luck 
day. Sometimes folks, an’ dogs, too, set out on 
Friday, an’ never do come back. Lordy, lordy, 
ain’t I see things like dat happen?” 

Marian laughed. 

“Don’t scare the child, Aunt Cindy.” 

“I ain’t skeerin’ the chile. Miss Marian. I 
mean ev’y word I say, Miss. Friday a bad day to 
start anywhere — a powerful bad day ! ” 

And she went on wiping dishes and shaking her 
turbaned head. 


270 FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 

It was winter wlien Steve Earle and Lancaster 
lifted Frank, without protest on his part, into the 
baggage car at Breton Junction. It was summer in 
the strange flat country where after two days and 
a night of travel Lancaster lifted him, rejoicing 
in his freedom, out again. It was old Frank s 
staunchness that brought calamity upon him. 
But that is going ahead. 

There had been three days of great shooting. 
The exiled feeling had left him, and he and Lan- 
caster had become comrades. Lancaster was a 
good shot and that commanded his respect. Lan- 
caster was a kind man and that commanded his 
affection. At the lodge in the pines where they lived 
were other men, hunters like Lancaster, and other 
dogs, bird dogs like himself, a congenial crowd, 
sportsmen all. 

Sometimes as he lay in the lodge, where if the 
night was cool a fire was built, and while he listened 
to the talk and laughter of the men, he thought of 
home — gravely, without repining, as a mature and 
self-sufficient man does. Lancaster would take 
him back, that he knew. If any doubts assailed 
him, a look into Lancaster’s face and into the faces 
of the other men dispelled them. These men were 
like his master — men on whom a dog can depend. 

On the morning of the fourth day Lancaster 
took him out alone, with only a guide. Barking 
with joy, he leaped up into the face of his friend; 


THE CALL OF HOME 


271 


then started out on his swift strong gallop through 
the level fields of broomstraw. In his eagerness 
to find birds he rounded a swamp. A wide, free 
ranger, he drew quickly out of sight. In a clearing 
engirt by pines he stopped abruptly — stopped just 
in time. Right before him, his nose told him, were 
birds. 

He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point. 
He would not stir until Lancaster came up behind 
him and ordered him on. And Lancaster with the 
guide was far behind and on the other side of the 
swamp. 

A fine sight he made in that lonely country, stand- 
ing, head erect, tail straight out, sun flashing on his 
silken red hair. So those two men, driving in a 
dilapidated wagon along a sandy road in the edge 
of the pines, must have thought. For the driver, 
a burly, sallow fellow, pointed him out, pulled on the 
reins, and the wagon stopped. The two talked for 
a while in guarded tones; next they stood up on the 
wagon seat and looked all around ; then they climbed 
out and came stealthily across the field. The burly 
man held in his hand a rope. 

Instinct alarmed the dog, warned him to turn. 
Professional pride held him rigid, lest he flush those 
birds and be disgraced. Pride betrayed him. A 
sudden grip cut his hind legs from under him, threw 
him flat on his back just as the birds rose with a roar. 
A thumb and forefinger, clamped in his mouth. 


272 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


pressed on his nose like a vise. He was squirming 
powerfully in the sand, but a knee was on his throat 
and the sky was growing black. 

Writhing and twisting, he was lifted to the wagon 
and tied in the bottom with ropes. Then pine trees 
were passing swiftly overhead. One man was lash- 
ing the mule. The other was standing up, looking 
back. 

“See anybody?” 

“No.” 

“Reckon he’s one of them thousand-dollar dogs, 
Jim?” 

“Reckon so! Look at him!” 

All day the wagon wheels ground the sand. All 
day old Frank, tied in the bottom of the wagon, 
sullenly watched those two men in the seat. Once 
or twice, at the sound of other wheels approaching 
along the unfrequented road, they pulled aside 
into the woods and waited. At dusk they turned 
into a dirty yard. On the porch of an unpainted 
shack stood a woman, beyond stretched level fields 
of broomstraw, then the flat blue line of forest, and 
above the forest a dark-red glow. 

They unfastened all the ropes but the one about 
his neck, pulled him out of the wagon, dragged him 
off to the log corncrib, shoved him in, untied the 
rope, and bolted the door. Then the burly man 
shoved in a pone of cornbread and a pan of water. 

“You go to town to-morrow, Sam,” he said as he 


THE CALL OF HOME 


273 


rebolted the door. “Just hang around and listen. 
See if there’s any reward in the paper — big red 
Irish setter. His owner might telegraph the paper 
to-night. Sooner we make the deal, the better.” 

Inside the crib the captive stood listening with 
shrewdly pricked ears while the mumble of voices 
died away toward the shack, steps stamped up on 
the porch, and the door slammed. Then he went 
cautiously round his prison, whiffing the sides, rear- 
ing up on the log walls. Across the rear corner was 
a pile of boxes. He climbed up on them. They 
rattled and he jumped quickly down. 

But later, after all sound had ceased in the shack 
and the lights he had been watching through a chink 
in the logs had gone out, he climbed carefully over 
behind these boxes. There was space to stand in 
back here; the floor was of broad boards. Through 
the cracks he could see that the crib was set up off 
the ground. 

He began to scratch the corner board, then to 
gnaw. All night long at intervals he sounded like 
a big rat in a barn. Sometimes he rested, panting 
hard, then went back to work. 

At the first sound of movement in the shack next 
morning he leaped back over the boxes, and when the 
burly man opened the door to shove in bread and 
water he lay in the middle of the floor and looked 
upon his captor with sullen dignity. 

That night he gnawed, and the next. But the 


274 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


surface of the board offered little hold for claws or 
teeth. Industry, patience, a good cause, do not 
make boards less hard, nails less maddening. He 
saw the third day dawn, he heard steps stumping 
about in the shack, he saw the other man ride into 
the dirty yard, and he sank down panting on his 
prison floor, his head between his paws, dismay in 
his heart. 

They brought him his breakfast and there was 
talk before his prison. 

“Two hundred dollars, hell!” said the burly man. 
“Is that all they’re offering? They’ll give a thou- 
sand but what they’ll git that dog!” 

“Well,” said the other, “I told Fred to watch the 
papers, and if the reward went up to send us one. 
You goin’ to keep him stopped up in thar?” 

“No. I’m goin’ to hunt him — over ’bout the 
swamps where nobody’s apt to see him. Then 
s’pose questions is asked? We don’t read no papers. 
We just found a lost dog and took care of him — see?” 

“S’pose he sneaks off on a hunt?” 

“Don’t let him. If he tries to git out of sight, 
fill him full of shot.” 

“The whole thing’s risky, Jim.” 

“Well, what is it ain’t risky?” 

Old Frank had always associated with gentlemen, 
hunted with sportsmen. Now he was to find what it 
means to be threatened, browbeaten, harassed in 
his work by inferiors. 


THE CALL OF HOME 


27 5 


On the first hunt, as soon as he got out in the 
field, he was yelled at. He turned in bewilderment. 
The men hunted on mules, their guns across the 
pommels of their saddles, and now they were gesti- 
culating angrily for him to come in. He ran to them, 
looking up into their faces with apologetic eyes, for, 
however scornful he might be of them in his prison, 
in the field his professional reputation, his bird- 
dog honour, were at stake. 

“You hunt close!” ordered the burly man. 

After that he tried shrewdly to get away, to 
manoeuvre out of sight under pretext of smelling 
birds. But the burly man called him in, got down 
off his mule, cut a big stick, and threatened him. 
Again, an enraged yell full of danger made him turn 
to find both guns pointed straight at him and the 
face of the burly man crimson. He came in, tail 
tucked, ears thrown back, eyes wild. 

“You look here, Jim,” said the man called Sam, 
“you better be satisfied. They’re offering four 
hundred dollars now, and that looks good to me. 
It’s been more’n a week. They ain’t goin’ to raise 
it any higher.” 

“They’ll give a thousand!” yelled the burly man. 

“All right, Jim — I’ve warned you!” 

Day after day they hunted over the same ground, 
along the border of a great swamp, where there were 
no houses, no roads, no cultivated fields. Day 
after day they grew watchful, until he was almost 


276 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


afraid to get out of the shadows cast by the mule. 
His tail that he had always carried so proudly began 
to droop, the gallop that used to carry him swiftly 
over fields and hills and woodland gave way to a 
spiritless trot. Fields and woods stretched all 
about him, the sky was overhead; but he was tied 
to these ragged men on mules as if by an invisible 
rope, which to break meant death. 

At intervals during the silent nights he still gnawed 
at his board behind the boxes, but he could not 
hunt all day and stay awake at night. Sheer 
weariness of body and spirit made him welcome any 
rest, even that of his hard prison floor. And there 
were times when it seemed that he had never known 
any life but the one he was living now. 

At first he had expected Lancaster to find him. 
He had thought of the men about the fireplace of 
the lodge. They would not desert him. Then as 
time passed he forgot them. Only a small part of 
his life had they ever filled. His master and mis- 
tress and the boy, his home far away in another 
world — more and more these filled his thoughts and 
his desires. 

Thus sometimes after a hunt, as he lay on the 
few shucks he had scratched together into a meagre 
bed, there came to him from the shack the smell 
of cooking meat; and he saw a big warm kitchen 
with a cat dozing by the stove, and a fat old negro 
mammy bending over steaming kettles and sputter- 


THE CALL OF HOME 


277 


ing skillets. Then hungry saliva dripped from his 
mouth to the floor and he choked and swallowed. 

Again, on chilly nights, when he glimpsed through 
the chinks a glow in the windows of the shack, there 
came into his mind a roaring fire of oak logs and a 
big living room, with a man and a woman and a 
little boy around the fire, and a gun standing in the 
corner with a hunting coat draped over it. Then 
he raised his big head and looked about his prison 
with eyes that glowed in the dark. It was at these 
times that he leaped over the boxes and began to 
gnaw fiercely at his board. 

But maybe even old Frank’s stout spirit would 
have broken, for hope deferred makes the heart of 
a dog, as well as the heart of man, sick; maybe he 
would have ceased to gnaw at his board behind the 
boxes; maybe he would have yielded to the men at 
last, submissive in spirit as well as in act, if he had 
not seen the train and the woman and the little 
boy. 

They had taken an unusually long hunt, out of 
their accustomed course. He had managed to get 
some distance ahead, pretending not to hear the 
shouts above the wind; the bird shot they had sent 
after him had only stung his rump, bringing from 
him a little involuntary yelp, but not causing him 
to turn. The wildness of the day had infected 
him. A high wind blowing out of a sunny, cloud- 
less sky ran in waves over the tawny level fields 


£78 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


of broomstraw, and from a body of pines to his 
right rose a great shouting roar. 

Suddenly out of the south a whistle came scream- 
ing melodiously on the wind. He galloped at an 
angle to intercept it. Out of the body of pines a 
long train shot and rushed past, the sun flashing 
on its sides, its roar deadened by the roar in the 
pines. Just behind it, among leaves and trash 
stirred into life and careering madly, along he leaped 
on the track. 

A glimpse he caught of the brass-railed rear plat- 
form, where a woman rose quickly from a chair, 
snatched up a boy smaller than Tommy, and held 
him high in her arms. The boy weaved at him, the 
woman smiled brilliantly, and he ran after them, 
leaping into the air, barking his hungry soul out. 

But the waving woman and the smiling boy 
whirled away, and in that desolate country a big 
Irish setter stood between the rails, and looked with 
straining eyes after the vanishing rear of the north- 
bound Florida Limited, overhung by coils of smoke. 

That was what had brought him down here. 
Those long, flashing rails led home ! He stood 
oblivious of everything else. He did not hear the 
shouts, he did not see the burly man jump off his 
mule, cut a stick, and hurry toward him, gun in 
hand. 

He had endured much during those evil days. 
But what followed was that which neither man nor 


THE CALL OF HOME 


279 


dog can ever forgive or forget. At the first blow 
he sprang about, mad with rage, but the man held 
the gun — to spring was to spring to death. He 
dropped down at the man’s feet and laid his head 
over the rail. He did not cry out. But the blows 
sounded hollow on his gaupt ribs, they ached sick- 
eningly into his very vitals. 

It could have had but one ending. Another blow, 
and he would have leaped at the man’s throat and 
to death. But the other man was rushing at them. 
“Great God, Jim,” he cried, “let up! You want to 
kill him?” White of face, he had grabbed the stick, 
and the two stood facing one another. From the 
pines still rose the great shouting roar. 

They came home through the dusk, a silent 
procession: the burly man rode in front, then the 
other man, and behind, with drooped head and 
tail, trotted old Frank. Now and then in the 
gathering gloom the men looked back at him, but 
not once did he raise his eyes to them. 

“I guess I learned him his lesson, Sam.” 

Sam did not reply. 

“I’m gettin’ tired of waitin’, anyhow.” 

Still Sam did not reply. 

And his silence must have had its effect; for 
when they reached home the burly man made the 
dog come into the shack. The wind had ceased, 
the night turned chilly, and they let him lie down 
before the fire of pine knots. The woman brought 


280 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


him a pot of hominy; the men felt his ribs as gently 
as they could. He shrank from the touch more than 
from the pain. Kindness had come too late, even 
for a dog. 

He lay before the hearth, indifferent to all that 
happened in this shabby room, for the sight of this 
fire had made him see another and kindlier fire, in 
another and kindlier world. These people did not 
notice his growing restlessness, his furtive glances, 
his panting breaths, the burning light in his eyes. 
For steps had come up on the porch; somebody 
had knocked at the door; the night of their fortune 
was here! 

The burly man hurried to answer, shaking the 
floor. The open door showed a Negro who handed 
in a paper. Somebody had sent it from town, he 
explained, and was gone. The woman snatched the 
paper. Heads close together, the three stood about 
a smoking kerosene lamp. The woman was reading 
in a whiny, excited drawl: “‘One thousand dollars 
reward for 9 99 

“I told you so!” burst from the burly man. 

“Shut up! Listen!” cried the other. 

“‘Irish setter/ she read. “‘Answers to name 
Frank. Notify R. A. Lancaster’ — Oh, here’s a lot 
of streets and numbers — ‘New York City.’ ” 

“I told you!” the burly man was shouting. 
“I told you I knew a dog when I saw one! Look 
at him, Sam! Look at that head! Look at that 


THE CALL OF HOME 


281 


dome above the ears! Look at that hair — like 
silk! The mould that dog was made in is broke!” 

“One thousand dollars!” gasped the woman. 
“One thousand dollars!” 

When the two men came out with him to his 
prison the excitement was still rising. The woman 
had already gone into another room, and the men 
had got out a bottle. Their voices as they bolted 
his door and propped a pole against it sounded loud 
and thick. They stamped up the steps, and he 
could hear them laughing and shouting in the shack. 
Surely they could not hear him gnawing — gnawing 
frantically at his board behind the boxes. They 
could not hear him jerking at the end of the board, 
freed at last from the sleeper below. They could 
not hear the board give way, throwing him on his 
haunches. Surely they could not hear the little 
bark that escaped him when the floor opened. 

But out in the yard, free at last, he sank suddenly 
down flat, head between his paws, very still. The 
back door of the shack had opened and the light 
shone out across the littered yard, up the walls of 
his prison, into his very eyes. The burly man had 
stepped out on the porch. 

It was one of those hollow nights when sounds 
carry far, when a spoken word is a shout. 

“I don’t hear nothin’, Sam.” 

The other man staggered out. 

“Maybe it was a rat,” he said. 


282 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


He could almost hear them breathing. 

“Guess I imagined,” said Sam. 

“Sure,” said the other. 

Their figures darkened the doorway. The burly 
man clapped the other on the back. 

“What I tell you, Sam! One thousand ” 

The door closed. The merriment would go on 
till morning. And old Frank, muscles limbering as 
he ran, soreness passing out of his side, was galloping 
through the night, toward the railroad — and home. 

Morning found him loping easily along the rail- 
road, nose pointed north like a compass. Now and 
then he left the track to let a train pass, looking at 
it, if it went north, with wistful eyes, then keeping 
in sight of it as far as he could. He passed a few 
small stations with big water tanks, he crossed long, 
low trestles over boundless marshes, he came at 
dusk to a village. 

Hungry, lonely, he approached an unpainted 
cottage on its outskirts. Two dogs rushed at him; 
he faced them and they turned back. He trotted 
on, hair risen in an angry tuft down his bark. He 
slept curled up in an abandoned shed, but not for long. 
The morning stars lingering low over the flat hori- 
zon kept pace with him, then a sea of mottled pink 
clouds, then the huge red face of the rising sun. 

At midday he pounced on an animal like a muskrat 
that tried to cross the track — a tough thing to kill, 
a tougher to eat. At dusk he drew near a farm- 


THE CALL OF HOME 


283 


house, where a man was chopping wood. The man 
picked up a stick, ordered him away, then went on 
chopping. 

He made no more overtures after this, but many 
a farmer thought a fox had been among his chickens. 
Habits of civilization had given way perforce to 
habits of outlawry. Only as he galloped north day 
after day his eyes still shone with the eager light of 
the bird dog’s craving for human companionship 
and love. 

The number of tracks that branched out from the 
city whose environs he skirted bewildered him for 
a minute; then he took the one that pointed due 
north. All the days he travelled, part of the nights. 
Sometimes at first he had wondered why he did not 
reach home, at last to travel always north had be- 
come a habit, and he wondered no more. 

But the time came when he could not keep on 
going as fast and as long as formerly. There were 
days when he found hardly anything at all to eat. 
The endless ties passing under him began to make 
him dizzy and faint. His long hair was matted; 
his ribs showed; his eyes grew haggard. It was a 
wonder the young man knew him for what he was. 

He had come into the freight yards of a town at 
nightfall, in a cold, driving rain, a bedraggled, for- 
lorn figure, a stray dog. A passenger train had 
just passed him, stopped at the station ahead, then 
pulled out. A light glistened down wet rails into 


284 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


his hungry eyes and blinded him. Rows of silent 
dripping box cars hid the man crossing the track 
at the street. Frank almost ran into him. Both 
stopped. The man was buttoned up to his neck in 
an overcoat and carried a satchel. 

“Hello!” he said. 

Frank started to slink back under a box car. 

“Come here!” He stooped down and looked into 
the dog’s eyes. “Where did you drop from?” he 
said. “You come with me! Let’s talk it over.” 

In a warm, firelit cottage room a young woman 
ran to meet the man — then for the first time she 
saw the dog. 

“Why, John!” she cried. “Where did you get 
him?” 

“He got me,” laughed the man, “on the way 
home from the station. He’s starving. Get him 
something to eat. Then I’ll tell you about it.” 

She glanced at a cradle, whose covers were being 
suddenly and violently agitated. 

“I’ll answer for this old fellow,” assured the man. 
“He’s seen better days. I think I’ve seen him 
before.” 

Out in the bright little kitchen, where they scraped 
together all the scraps they could find, he went on : 

“Of course I may be mistaken. But at a little 
station where I sell goods sometimes, I used to see 
a big red Irish setter following a tall man and a 
little boy. I think they lived out in the country 


THE CALL OF HOME 


28 5 


from there. The kind of folks and the kind of dog 
you don’t forget. If it wasn’t so far — hang it, I 
believe it’s the dog, anyhow! Well, we’ll take good 
care of him, and next week when I go through I’ll 
find out.” 

The young woman in a raincoat came out in the 
back yard and held the streaming lantern while 
the man arranged some sacks underneath the porch 
and closed and bolted the back gate. He heard them 
go up the back steps, heard them moving about in 
the house. Like a decent old fellow he licked the 
rain from his silken coat, smoothed out the matted 
strands, then curled up comfortably in his dry bed 
and slept deep and long. 

He stayed with them a week, while strength re- 
turned to his muscles, fire to his eyes, courage to his 
heart. But as he lay before their hearth at night 
he saw always in his mind that other fire — the fire of 
home. The stars were still shining that morning 
when he scrambled over the high back fence and was 
gone. 

But it was with new life and confidence that he 
continued his journey. He slunk no more on the 
outskirts of towns; he passed boldly through. For- 
tune favoured him now; on the second day after he 
left them he ran into snow, and rabbits are almost 
helpless before a swift pounce in the snow. 

The drifts grew deeper as he travelled north. 
Fields of dead cotton stalks were varied by fields of 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


withered corn stubble, yellow, broken rows on white 
hills. There was an occasional big farmhouse now, 
a house with white pillars like his master’s, set in a 
grove of naked oaks. And at last, following fence 
rows and hedges, lines of cylindrical cedars climbed 
over and over high hills. The look of home was on 
the face of nature, the smell of home was in the air. 

It was a bitter cold afternoon when the mountains 
first took shape in the distance. He could make 
them out, though the sky was heavily overcast. 
Those were the mountains he saw every morning 
from the back porch of his home. He barked at 
them as he ran. He would lie before his own fire 
this night. 

At dusk sudden hunger assailed him. On a hill 
was a big farmhouse, the windows aglow, smoke 
veering wildly from the chimneys. And on the 
wind came the smell of cooking meat. He stopped 
on an embankment, pricked his ears, licked his 
chops. Then he scrambled down the embank- 
ment and like a big fox made his way along a fence 
row toward that house from whence came the smell 
of cooking meat. At the same time flakes of snow 
began to drive horizontally across the white fields. 

Suddenly from out the yard two stocky cream- 
coloured dogs rushed at him. They came with in- 
credible swiftness through the snow, considering 
their short bench legs. Frank waited, head up, ears 
pricked. One was a female; it was she who came 


THE CALL OF HOME 


m 


first. He would not fight a female; he even wagged 
his tail haughtily. But in a twinkling she was under 
him and had caught his hind leg in a crushing, grind- 
ing grip. He lunged back, snarling, and the other 
dog sprang straight at his throat. 

He was down in the snow, he was on his feet again, 
he was ripping the short back of the dog at his throat 
into shreds, his fangs flashing in the dusk. He was 
dragging them by sheer strength off toward the 
railroad; but he could not tear that grip from his 
hind leg, nor that other grip from his throat. 

He did not cry out — he was no yelping cur. But 
it was growing dark, the air was full of snow, the 
grip was tightening on his throat, the other grip had 
pulled him down at last to his haunches. Then two 
men came running toward them, the one white, the 
other black. The white man grabbed the dog at 
his throat, the black man the dog under him. The 
white man was pounding the dog’s nose with his 
fist, was cramming snow down his bloody mouth. 

“They’ll kill him, Will!” he panted. “Go get 
some water to throw in their faces.” 

The black man disappeared running — came back 
running, a bucket in each hand. 

And now it was over, and off there the white man 
held both his dogs by their collars. They were 
panting, their wrinkled eyes half closed, their 
mouths dripping bloody foam. For many yards 
around the snow was churned into little hillocks. 


288 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


And there lay old Frank, panting hard, head up, 
eyes shining. 

“Pick him up, Will!” said the white man. “His 
leg’s broke.” 

“Cap’n,” said the negro, “I’m afraid of him.” 

The white man swore, shaking his dogs angrily. 
That was some man’s bird dog, a fine one, too. 

“I believe that’s Steve Earle’s setter, from Free- 
dom Hill across the river!” he cried above the wind. 
“By George, I believe that’s just who it is! We’ll 
go and get the sled!” 

But when they hurried back with the sled the 
wounded dog was gone. They followed his blood- 
stained tracks across the field, up the embankment, 
and to the railroad. They looked at them be- 
tween the rails, fast filling with snow. The white 
man put his hands to his ears. 

“He’ll freeze to-night,” he said. 

In the teeth of the wind, like a three-legged 
automaton, Frank was fighting his way doggedly 
through the night. The wind almost blew him off 
the embankments; the swirling waves of snow choked 
him. Maybe he would have lain down, maybe it 
would have happened as the man said, if it had not 
been for the spirit within him and for what he saw. 

For just before him the superstructure of an iron 
trestle rose pencilled in snow against the night. 
Far below a black river wound serpentine into the 
mists. A mile to the left, he knew, was Squire 


THE CALL OF HOME 


289 


Kirby’s. In those dim bottoms on either side of the 
trestle he and his master and the squire had hunted 
a hundred times. The birds had scattered on those 
wooded hills now vibrant with the blast. Out on the 
trestle he picked his slow, hesitating way. 

Suddenly he cried out sharply. A mighty gust 
of wind striking him in mid-air and almost hurling 
him into the blackness below had caused him to 
put down as a brace his wounded hind leg. Gasp- 
ing, trembling, he lay down for a minute on the 
whitened ties, one leg hanging through. Then he 
rose and doggedly picked his way on. 

On the high embankment at the other side of the 
trestle he stopped and, in spite of the blood stiffened 
under his throat and the water frozen on his shoulders, 
he raised his quivering nose. Beyond those misty 
bottoms, to the left, over those storm-swept ridges, 
lay Freedom Hill. 

Halfway down the embankment he cried out 
again. He had slipped in the snow and fallen 
on his leg. Under shelter of the embankment he 
rested for a moment, panting as if the night were 
hot. Then lunging, tottering, falling, rising again, 
panting, gasping but with never another cry, old 
Frank fought his way up the river bottoms, past the 
farm of John Davis, across the field in front of Tom 
Belcher’s store, now a dim smudge in the blackness 
— dragged himself over the last ridge, dragged him- 
self home. 


290 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


Belly deep in drifted snow he stood at the corner 
of the lot fence and surveyed the white distance 
that lay between him and his kennel — more un- 
attainable to his weakness than a quarter of a con- 
tinent had been to his strength. And while he 
stood there the roaring of the wind in the great oaks 
overhead, the cracking of their naked branches, the 
swirl of snow against his nose and in his eyes, be- 
wildered him, and suddenly something deep within 
him whispered to him to lie down and rest. 

But the sudden terror of death lurked in that 
whisper and, head dragging in the snow, he staggered 
across the yard toward his kennel. In here he 
would crawl and hide from that fearful thing that 
had told him to lie down in the snow and rest. He 
reached the kennel, he touched it with his eager nose, 
he tried to root his way in between the slats which he 
had not known were there. Then gasping and helpless 
he sat down before it. The door of his kennel was 
nailed up. The great hulk of the house loomed dark 
and silent above it. Maybe his people were gone! 

With this new terror in his heart he fought his way 
around to the side of the house. Underneath his 
master’s window he raised his head and tried to bark. 
But the wind snatched the muffled sound out of 
his throat and hurled it away into the darkness. 
Once more the still small voice that terrified even 
while it soothed pleaded with him to lie down and 
rest. Maybe he would have listened now, maybe 


THE CALL OF HOME 


291 


he would have yielded, if he had not seen through 
the living-room curtains the sudden flicker of fire- 
light on the ceiling. They were not gone — they 
were only asleep. Tail wagging strangely as if 
someone in there had spoken to him, he rose for the 
last time and struggled toward the front of the 
house. At the corner a gust of wind, waiting in 
ambush, rushed at him and stopped him where he 
was. A moment he waited for it to die down, then 
dragged himself to the steps, up the steps, his ruined 
hind leg hitting each one like a rag tied in a knot and 
frozen. 

By the big front door he sat down and raised 
to it his suffering eyes. A hundred times it had 
opened to his whim; now in his need it barred his 
way. Gathering all his remaining strength, he 
raised his paw — the paw he shook hands with — and 
scratched. There was no sound from within. 

Once more — it would be the last time, so heavy 
had his leg become — he raised his paw and scratched. 
Then careless of all things, of master and mistress, 
of life and death, he sank down before the door and 
laid his head on the sill. 

He never knew how it happened. He only knew 
there was a burst of light in his eyes, and somebody 
had picked him up. Then faces were bent close 
to him; something hot and gagging was being poured 
down his throat; a voice — the most commanding 
voice in all the world — ordered him to swallow, 


292 


FRANK OF FREEDOM HILL 


swallow. And now he saw before him, as he lay 
on his side, a roaring fire whose flames licked and 
twisted among oak logs piled high into the chimney. 

Strange that he had not known that fire all the 
time; that he had not known who these people were. 
But then he had been on a long journey, and he was 
tired, very tired. He must tell them he knew now, 
let them know he appreciated what they were doing. 
He always did that even with strangers, and these 
— they were his master, his mistress, his Tommy. 
He must 

It was Tommy’s shrill voice that broke the 
silence. 

“Look, Papa, look, look! He wagged his tail. 
He wagged his old tail ! ” 


THE END 







































































